‘Unusually large’: Meet the titanosaur that dwarfed Dippy the Diplodocus | dinosaurs

It will be one of the largest exhibits ever to grace a British museum. in spring , Natural History Museum In London, the skeleton of a titanosaur, a creature so massive it would have to be shoeless, will be on display at the 9-meter Waterhouse Gallery.

One of the largest creatures that ever walked the Earth. Mayor of Patagotitan It was a 57-ton behemoth that would have shaken the earth as it trampled its homelands that now make up modern-day Patagonia. The skeleton measures 37 meters long and 5 meters high – much larger than the museum’s most famous dinosaur, Diplodocus, which loomed over its main exhibit.

“The sheer size of this creature is extraordinary,” said the museum’s dinosaur expert Professor Paul Barrett. “Even when you see him next to one of today’s giant animals, like an elephant, it simply dwarfs them. He’s humble.”

what’s left of Mayor of Patagotitan It was revealed in 2010 when a farm owner in Patagonia came across a giant femur protruding from the ground. Argentine paleontologists later excavated more than 200 skeletal pieces, the remains of at least six individual animals.

Casts of these bones were made by Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, Patagonia, and these casts make up the skeleton that will be on display in London in March.

“The number of bones that have been uncovered represents a treasure trove of material,” said Sinead Maron, principal curator. “This means that we now know much more about this species than we do about many other dinosaurs.”

Mayor of Patagotitan It lived about 100 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, near the end of the dinosaurs’ reign on Earth. It was one of the three or four largest species of titanosaurs now known to science. These creatures are built like suspension bridges with massive backbones, a broad neck for collecting food from trees, and a tail for providing balance.

“They were herbivores that devoured plants and leaves and fermented them in their vast stomachs, producing massive amounts of methane as a byproduct — so you wouldn’t want to hang around the back end of one of these animals,” Barrett said. “In fact, some people argue that plant-eating dinosaurs like this spewed out a lot of methane which contributed to the greenhouse effect that the planet would later control.”

Maroun added that although these huge creatures weighed more than nine elephants, they looked smaller than a baby. She added, “As part of the exhibition, we are showing a fossilized dinosaur egg with a diameter of about 15 cm, which is smaller than a soccer ball.” “Since then the animal has grown to be 37 meters long.”

Many mysteries still surround Mayor of Patagotitan, However. “You find large dinosaur remains in many places, but in Patagonia you find very large dinosaurs, like titanosaurs,” Barrett said. “Was there something special about the environment in the area at this time or have we been so unlucky not to find titanosaur remains elsewhere?”

Nor is it clear why the six animals died so close together. “They all grew almost completely dead and died in the same location,” said Maroun. “But why? What could do that? It is not clear, although the mystery gives an additional dimension to the story of these wonderful animals.”

Titanosaurus: Life as the Greatest Dinosaur opens on March 31 next year until January 7th 2024.