http://www.popularmechanics.com/sci...dino-may-be-largest-land-animal-ever-17170269
Move over, Velociraptor and T. rex. Here comes another top-tier dinosaur for the history books.
Today an international team of paleontologists unveiled the newest Mesozoic badass: Dreadnoughtus schrani. Weighing in at an astonishing 65 tons, standing two stories high at the shoulder, and measuring 85 feet long, this titan is the heaviest dinosaur we've ever (accurately) measured. And its discovery represents the most fossil mass ever found for a single organism—a paleontologist's dream.
"For the [largest] dinosaurs, which we call titanosaurs, finding anything around 20 percent of the fossil is usually considered a home run," says Kenneth Lacovara, the lead Drexel University paleontologist behind the find. "Normally you only find a handful of bones, and the previous record was a 27 percent complete skeleton. With Dreadnoughtus we found 70 percent."
Near-Complete
The reason near-complete finds are so rare is because fossilization requires a quick burial in sediment. As you can imagine, it's an extraordinary occurrence for something as big as a Dreadnoughtus to be buried so quickly. But according to Lacovara, the scientists believe a rapid pair of floods, caused by broken earthen levees in the valley where Dread was found, are behind the impressively complete find. (Sedimentary records in nearby areas back up this idea.)
Lacovara chanced upon Dread during a fossil hunting trip to the Santa Cruz province of southern Argentina in 2005. Two individuals of the same species were found, the biggest of which was composed of 115 massive bones and a single tooth. It took 4 annual trips just to haul the fossil out of the ground, and then another 4 years of cleaning and fossil preparation work to get it ready for study. (Full disclosure: This author spent endless hours in 2010 and 2011 cleaning two of Dred's massive vertebrae. Yes. They are that big.)
According to Jason Poole, a head fossil preparator at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences and member of the excavation team, "We really started to get a great picture of how lucky we were after that first season. People kept finding all these [fossilized bones] still in their anatomically correct positions over and over again. It was really exciting."
Lizard King
Move over, Velociraptor and T. rex. Here comes another top-tier dinosaur for the history books.
Today an international team of paleontologists unveiled the newest Mesozoic badass: Dreadnoughtus schrani. Weighing in at an astonishing 65 tons, standing two stories high at the shoulder, and measuring 85 feet long, this titan is the heaviest dinosaur we've ever (accurately) measured. And its discovery represents the most fossil mass ever found for a single organism—a paleontologist's dream.
"For the [largest] dinosaurs, which we call titanosaurs, finding anything around 20 percent of the fossil is usually considered a home run," says Kenneth Lacovara, the lead Drexel University paleontologist behind the find. "Normally you only find a handful of bones, and the previous record was a 27 percent complete skeleton. With Dreadnoughtus we found 70 percent."
Near-Complete
The reason near-complete finds are so rare is because fossilization requires a quick burial in sediment. As you can imagine, it's an extraordinary occurrence for something as big as a Dreadnoughtus to be buried so quickly. But according to Lacovara, the scientists believe a rapid pair of floods, caused by broken earthen levees in the valley where Dread was found, are behind the impressively complete find. (Sedimentary records in nearby areas back up this idea.)
Lacovara chanced upon Dread during a fossil hunting trip to the Santa Cruz province of southern Argentina in 2005. Two individuals of the same species were found, the biggest of which was composed of 115 massive bones and a single tooth. It took 4 annual trips just to haul the fossil out of the ground, and then another 4 years of cleaning and fossil preparation work to get it ready for study. (Full disclosure: This author spent endless hours in 2010 and 2011 cleaning two of Dred's massive vertebrae. Yes. They are that big.)
According to Jason Poole, a head fossil preparator at Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences and member of the excavation team, "We really started to get a great picture of how lucky we were after that first season. People kept finding all these [fossilized bones] still in their anatomically correct positions over and over again. It was really exciting."
Lizard King
