Posted on 06/15/2021 7:00:30 AM PDT by Red Badger
Australotitan cooperensis, “Southern Titan of the Cooper.” Credit: Vlad Konstantinov, Scott Hocknull ©Eromanga Natural History Museum
What’s as long a basketball court, taller than a b-double and has just stomped into the record books as Australia’s largest dinosaur? It’s time to meet Australotitan cooperensis — a new species of giant sauropod dinosaur from Eromanga, southwest Queensland.
Australotitan, “the southern titan,” has been scientifically described and named by Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum paleontologists.
It is estimated to have reached a height of 5-6.5 meters at the hip and 25- 30 meters in length and sits within the top 10-15 largest dinosaurs world-wide, representing Australia’s entry into the largest species to have ever walked the Earth.
The fossilized skeleton was originally nicknamed ‘Cooper’ after Cooper Creek, when first discovered in 2007 by the Eromanga Natural History Museum. It now represents the largest species of dinosaur ever found in Australia.
The scientific publication marks a seventeen-year long culmination of the joint effort between Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum paleontologists, fossil preparators, geologists, and countless volunteers.
Dr. Scott Hocknull and Robyn McKenzie. 3D reconstruction Cooper humerus 2015 Credit: (C) Rochelle Lawrence
“Australotitan adds to the growing list of uniquely Australian dinosaur species discovered in Outback Queensland, and just as importantly showcases a totally new area for dinosaur discovery in Australia,” Dr Hocknull said.
“To make sure Australotitan was a different species, we needed to compare its bones to the bones of other species from Queensland and globally. This was a very long and painstaking task.”
Dinosaur bones are enormous, heavy and fragile, and are kept in museums 100s-1000s of kilometers apart, making scientific study very difficult. For the first time, the team used new digital technology to 3-D scan each bone of Australotitan and compare them to the bones of its closest relatives. These scans will form part of the museum’s digital collection that is powered by Project DIG, a partnership between Queensland Museum Network and BHP.
“The 3-D scans we created allowed me to carry around 1000s of kilos dinosaur bones in a 7kg laptop. Better yet, we can now share these scans and knowledge online with the world,” Dr Hocknull said.
The study found that Australotitan was closely related to three other Australian sauropods that lived during the Cretaceous Period (92-96 million years ago).
“We compared the three species found to the north, near Winton, to our new Eromanga giant and it looks like Australia’s largest dinosaurs were all part of one big happy family.
“We found that Australotitan was the largest in the family, followed by Wintonotitan with big hips and long legs, whilst the two smaller sauropods, Diamantinasaurus and Savannasaurus were shorter in stature and heavily-set.” Dr. Hocknull said along with the description of Australotitan, the study has also revealed a swathe of new discoveries in the area awaiting full scientific study.
Australotitan cooperensis next to the 2021 dinosaur dig site. Credit: Vlad Konstantinov, Dr. Scott Hocknull ©Eromanga Natural History Museum
“Over the last 17-years numerous dinosaur, skeletons have been found, including one with an almost complete tail. The discovery of a rock-shelf, almost 100 meters long, represents a sauropod pathway, where the dinosaurs walked along trampling mud and bones into the soft ground,” Dr. Hocknull said. “Discoveries like this are just the tip of the iceberg. Our ultimate goal is to find the evidence that tells the changing story of Queensland, hundreds of millions of years in the making. A grand story all scientists, museums and tourists can get behind.”
Minister for Arts Leeanne Enoch said the exciting new discovery helps to cement Queensland as Australia’s dinosaur capital.
“Discoveries like Australotitan tell the story of a time when dinosaurs roamed Queensland,” Minister Enoch said.
“Queensland Museum experts have been on the ground, sharing their knowledge with regional museums and helping to preserve and better understand the diverse paleontological hi story of our state.
“These unique outback discoveries are supporting Queensland as we deliver our economic recovery plan creating local jobs in regional and cultural tourism.” Robyn Mackenzie, General Manager of Eromanga Natural History Museum said it’s an exciting culmination of a major amount of work.
“Finding Cooper has changed the course of our lives and led to the establishment of the Eromanga Natural History Museum,” Ms Mackenzie said.
“Working with Queensland Museum to formally describe Cooper has helped put our little town of Eromanga in Quilpie Shire South West Qld on the map. Australotitan is just the start, we have many more discoveries awaiting full scientific study.
“It’s amazing to think from the first bones discovered by our son, the first digs with the Queensland Museum, through to the development of a not-for-profit museum that runs annual dinosaur digs, all have helped us to get to this point, it’s a real privilege.”
Queensland Museum Network CEO Dr. Jim Thompson said this represented the first dinosaur discovery in this corner of south-west Queensland.
“In the early 2000s Australia was at the beginning of a dinosaur-rush, with a number of significant new species of dinosaurs and megafauna being discovered in the past 20 years. Australia is one of the last frontiers for dinosaur discovery and Queensland is quickly cementing itself as the paleo- capital of the nation — there is still plenty more to discover,” Dr. Thompson said.
“I am proud that Queensland Museum paleontologists have been part of many of these amazing discoveries and are leaders in their fields.”
The new paper was published recently in PeerJ — the Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences.
For more on this research, read Meet the Massive Australotitan, the “Southern Titan” – Australia’s Largest Dinosaur!
Reference: “A new giant sauropod, Australotitan cooperensis gen. et sp. nov., from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia” by Scott A. Hocknull, Melville Wilkinson, Rochelle A. Lawrence, Vladislav Konstantinov, Stuart Mackenzie and Robyn Mackenzie, 7 June 2021, PeerJ. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.11317
“Thus, scholars have researched the ages of the people and reigns of kings in the Bible and have come up with (deduction) an approximate age of the earth ....”
Wackadoodles have reasoned from false premises to a nonsensical conclusion.
“The Bible DOES teach creation of all matter in and on earth.”
It doesn’t teach us all the details, and it certainly doesn’t teach the details that we would be unable to understand under any circumstances. IMO, God created everything in such a way that it left the fossil record, and there’s certainly no reason that He couldn’t have taken a couple of billion years to do it, if it suited His fancy.
“You can’t throw THAT out in your reasoning.”
Tomas Aquinas wrote, “The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false.”
That is exactly what this “young earth” nonsense does. There are many things that science has not explained, but it is plain and clear that the Earth is more than a few thousand years old.
Aquinas also said this, which speaks to both fundamentalists and scientists: “Some there are who presume so far on their wits that they think themselves capable of measuring the whole nature of things by their intellect, in that they esteem all things true which they see, and false which they see not. Accordingly, in order that man’s mind might be freed from this presumption, and seek the truth humbly, it was necessary that certain things far surpassing his intellect should be proposed to man by God.”
The ideas of Aquinas you quoted are more apt with each passing day. Thanks for posting.
Cite the false premises, please
No known muscle gravity combination makes these things logical or explainable. You have to RADICALLY modify one or both.
Do you mean to say the size of these giants is impossible considering the muscle mass that was needed, etc. ?
“Cite the false premises, please”
The first would be thinking that there is information in the Bible that would allow one to calculate years elapsed since the big bang (or whatever event heralded the beginning of the universe).
And that’s really enough. If you don’t have the data required, you can’t perform the calculation.
Thanks for your kind words.
Coopersaurus would have been much easier to say......
Would not have been grammatically correct Latin ..................
The ages of the people (Adam ff) and the reigns of the kings bring us back to the Biblical creation of man.
Yes. There are models. No current muscle tissue can support those necks/tails. I can’t remember the multiples of extra strength but it’s orders of magnitude more than anything know. Something doesn’t add up?
Are they real bones ?
Live dinos still exist, but only in the form of birds.
and what do you think that means?
You keep creating paper tigers based on something I did not say.
I believe you need a lot of professional help.
So I’m thru with this discussion with you.
"If I understand your point is that God created all life only here on earth. Again please show me chapter and verse where God stated that He created all life and only here on earth. All life here on earth was created by God does not equate to God created life only on earth. I believe the Bible, and thus God, is silent on the issue of life on other planets and thus leaves it open for discovery."
cite your discovery
“The ages of the people (Adam ff) and the reigns of the kings bring us back to the Biblical creation of man.”
I knew I shouldn’t have gotten into this. Its worse than trying to convince a schizophrenic that her best buddy doesn’t really exist.
Study science until you understand how things are dated.
Ready? Begin.
“years elapsed since the big bang”
Do you mind specifying location?
That is, are you referring to years elapsed in your current location, or to years elapsed in the precise location of the “big bang?”
Remember, time is relative to space—not only to itself.
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