A huge titanosaur in Australia turns into a new species | Science

The giant called Australotitan coprensis is a member of the titanosaur family that lived 100 million years ago. The height of the animal was from 5 to 6.5 and its length from 25 to 30 meters. It is the largest dinosaur in Australia. Globally, this titanosaur is among the top five, estimates the director of the Eromanga Natural History Museum, Robin McKenzie.

Fossil bones of the animal were found in 2006 on the Mackenzie family’s farm, about a thousand kilometers west of Brisbane. The dinosaur Cooper was named after a river. The skeleton was shown to the public in 2007.

After lengthy and difficult research, including 3D scans, it was determined that it was a new species of dinosaur. The results were published in the scientific journal PeerJ.

Tip of the iceberg

Many other dinosaur bones have been found in the same area, but a lot of digging remains to be done. “Discoveries like this are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Queensland Museum paleontologist Scott Hocknoll.

The largest dinosaur known to date is the “Patagonia titan”, which was discovered in Argentina and described in 2017. This herbivorous animal weighed an estimated 70 tons, and was about 37 meters long and 8 meters high.