Experts have uncovered the remains of a gigantic dinosaur in Argentina, and believe it could be one of the largest creatures to have ever walked the Earth.
Paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of a 98 million-year-old titanosaur in Neuquén Province in Argentina’s northwest Patagonia, in thick, sedimentary deposits known as the Candeleros Formation.
The titanosaur, which lived from the Late Jurassic Epoch (163.5 million to 145 million years ago) through the Cretaceous Period (145 million to 66 million years ago) was known for its long neck and tail and four-legged stance, according to Britannica.
Publishing their research in the journal Cretaceous Research, the paleontologists from Argentina’s The Zapala Museum, Museo de La Plata, Museo Egidio Feruglio and the universities of Río Negro and Zaragoza who found the bones believe the creature may have been as 122-feet long. A female blue whale, the largest living creature today, can reach a length of over 80 feet, for comparison.
“It is a huge dinosaur, but we expect to find much more of the skeleton in future field trips, so we’ll have the possibility to address with confidence how really big it was,” Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist with Argentina’s Museo de La Plata, told CNN.
The researchers said it would be impossible to determine how much the creature weighed without measuring its humerus or femur, but it may have weighed as many as 110 tons. A typical African elephant weighs up to 9 tons.