DHAKA: He was a big boy. A very, very big boy.
In fact, the Dreadnoughtus schrani dinosaur unveiled Thursday was one of the biggest -- if not THE biggest -- land animal ever to grace the Earth.
Experts estimate that back in his day -- which was the Upper Cretaceous period, approximately 77 million years ago -- that this creature whose fossilized remains were unearthed recently in Argentina's southwestern Patagonia measured out at 85 feet long and weighed about 65 tons.
No wonder, then, paleontologists picked a first name that breaks down to "fear nothing." (The second name honors benefactor and tech entrepreneur Adam Schran.) You wouldn't be scared, either, if you towered over every creature in sight, could smash most anything with your whip-like tail and could smoosh anything with your colossal feet, reports CNN.
"Dreadnoughtus schrani was astoundingly huge," said Kenneth Lacovara, the lead author of the report published in Scientific Reports, as quoted on his school Drexel University's website. "It weighed as much as a dozen African elephants or more than seven T. rex."
And to think the massive dinosaur pieced together by Lacovara's team was still growing up, according to expert analysis.
It's hard to say how much bigger this or other Dreadnoughtus may have gotten had it fully matured. Nor, without a time machine, can one quickly determine if this new species was bigger than fellow titanosaurs such as the similarly gargantuan Argentinosaurus.
That's mostly because other finds like these are relatively incomplete, forcing paleontologists to make estimates based off a bone or two here and there.
"Titanosaurs are a remarkable group of dinosaurs, with species ranging from the weight of a cow to the weight of a sperm whale or more," said Matthew Lamanna, a Carnegie Museum of Natural History scholar who was part of the team, in the Drexel piece. "But the biggest dinosaurs have remained a mystery because, in almost all cases, their fossils are very incomplete."
Not so with the new Dreadnoughtus specimen, which is another big reason -- big being the operative word for everything about this creature -- it's so special.
BDST: 0945 HRS, SEP 05, 2014
