The biggest dinosaur yet?

From All Voices: The biggest dinosaur yet?

Those colossal lizards that lived millions of years ago have always been of infinite interest to armchair enthusiasts and paleontologists alike. But nearly everyone knows the names of some dinosaurs; most are able to name the T-Rex and if they were paying attention during “Jurassic park”, Velociraptors then. Even those with the faintest idea know that dinosaurs were big, car-big, house-big, and even building-big.

Of course, when it comes to size, bipedal or just two legs wouldn’t cut it. Sure, the T-Rex was almost 15 foot tall, but its height pales in comparison to the sauropods, the largest dinosaurs to have roamed prehistoric earth. This group of dinosaurs was massive; the Brachiosaurus for example, measured 26 meters and weighed almost 30 metric tons, and the largest known sauropod, the Argentinosaurus, weighed in at a phenomenal 70 tons. But a recent discovery in America may just unseat the Argentinosaurus.

In a joint discovery by the Museum of Rockies in Montana State and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, the paleontologist teams discovered fragments, two vertebrae and a femur to be exact, of the Alamosaurus sanjuanensis.

The fossil remains were discovered in New Mexico, where it is believed the Alamosaurus roamed around 69 million years ago. The dinosaur was discovered back around the 1920s and its size was considered to be around 60 feet, weighing 30 tons. But on the new dig, the paleontologists were surprised to discover that the Alamosaurus remains were much larger than expected, hinting at an even greater size. It was believed that the Alamosaurus adult, to whom the bones belonged, was still growing, possibly indicating that the known measurements of the dinosaur were transitory.

Dr. W. Fowler of Montana State University explained the find as, “This (the find) told us that Alamosaurus got even bigger, but we didn't imagine that it could get quite this big. Over the past 20 years, Argentinean and Brazilian palaeontologists have been unearthing bigger and bigger dinosaurs, putting the rest of the world in the shade,” adding, “Our findings show that Alamosaurus was originally described based on immature material and this is a problem as characteristics that define a species are typically only fully gained at adult size. This means that we might be misinterpreting the relationships of Alamosaurus and possibly other sauropod dinosaurs too.”

Finding complete fossil remains of the sauropods has been rare and most of those have unearthed only bits and pieces. This has stymied work on this group of the dinosaurs, something that has affected the Alamosaurus’ standing. But Dr. Fowler is confident that more remains can be found, helping paint a more complete picture of the dinosaur, especially because the Naashoibito region of New Mexico, where the bones were found, are known to have revealed many Alamosaurus remains in the past.