Amazing giant dinosaur discovery: New dino species identified

Sci-News.com ^ | Sept 28, 2018 | Chris Ciaccia | Fox News

[ETL]

A new species of dinosaur has been discovered, known as Ledumahadi mafube, the largest animal that walked the Earth during its lifetime.

Ledumahadi mafube, which means "a giant thunderclap at dawn," in the South African language Sesotho, walked in an unusual way. It did not walk on straight limbs, but rather with a "crouched" stance, causing scientists to believe L. mafube was an "evolutionary 'experiment'."

"The first thing that struck me about this animal is the incredible robustness of the limb bones," said lead author Dr. Blair McPhee in a statement. "It was of similar size to the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, but whereas the arms and legs of those animals are typically quite slender, Ledumahadi's are incredibly thick."

Dr. McPhee continued: "To me this indicated that the path towards gigantism in sauropodomorphs was far from straightforward, and that the way that these animals solved the usual problems of life, such as eating and moving, was much more dynamic within the group than previously thought."

The 13-ton, roughly 49-feet long giant (approximately double the size of an African elephant) lived during the early part of the Jurassic era, some 200 million years ago. Fossils of the sauropod were found in South Africa, near the country's border with Lesotho on what was then the super continent Panagea, in the 1980s. But it wasn't until 2017 when the entire dinosaur was excavated that paleontologists learned how it walked, LiveScience reported.

University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) paleontologist Professor Jonah Choiniere noted that Ledumahadi is closely related to other gigantic dinosaurs from Argentina, hammering home the idea that Pangaea was still forming during the early Jurassic period.  "It shows how easily dinosaurs could have walked from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires at that time," Choiniere said in the statement.

[ETL]

It MAY have been the largest of its time period, but it’s far from the largest dinosaur discovered (so far)...

Argentinosaurus

Argentinosaurus (meaning “Argentine lizard”[1]) is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur first discovered by Guillermo Heredia in Argentina. The generic name refers to the country in which it was discovered.

The dinosaur lived on the then-island continent of South America somewhere between 97 and 93.5 million years ago,[2] during the Late Cretaceous Period. It is among the largest known dinosaurs.

Description

Not much of Argentinosaurus has been recovered. The holotype included only a series of vertebrae (six from the back, five partial vertebrae from the hip region), ribs of the right side of the hip region, a part of a rib from the flank, and the right fibula (lower leg bone). One of these vertebrae was 1.59 meters tall, and the fibula was about 1.55 meters (61 inches).[3]

In addition to these bones, an incomplete femur (upper leg bone, specimen number MLP-DP 46-VIII-21-3) is assigned to Argentinosaurus; this incomplete femur shaft has a minimum circumference of about 1.18 meters.[4] The proportions of these bones and comparisons with other sauropod relatives allow paleontologists to estimate the size of the animal.

Size

An early reconstruction by Gregory S. Paul estimated Argentinosaurus at between 30–35 metres (98–115 ft) in length and with a weight of up to 80–100 tonnes (88–110 short tons).[5][6]

The length of the skeletal restoration mounted in Museo Carmen Funes is 39.7 metres (130 ft) long and 7.3 metres (24 ft) tall at the shoulder.

This is the longest reconstruction in a museum and contains the original material, including a mostly complete fibula.[7] Other estimates have compared the fragmentary material to relatively complete titanosaurs to help estimate the size of Argentinosaurus.

In 2006 Carpenter used the more complete Saltasaurus as a guide and estimated Argentinosaurus at 30 metres (98 ft) in length.[8] An unpublished estimate used published reconstructions of Saltasaurus, Opisthocoelicaudia, and Rapetosaurus as guides and gave shorter length estimates of between 22–26 metres (72–85 ft).[9]

Weight estimates are less common, but Mazzetta et al. (2004) provide a range of 60–88 tonnes (66–97 short tons), and consider 73 tonnes (80 short tons) to be the most likely, making it the heaviest sauropod known from good material.[4]

More recently, it was estimated at 83.2 tonnes (91.7 short tons) by calculating the volume of the aforementioned Museo Carmen Funes skeleton.[7] Scott Hartman suggests that since Argentinosaurus is a basal titanosaur, it would have a shorter tail and narrower chest than Puertasaurus, suggesting that it was slightly smaller than other giant titanosaurs such as Puertasaurus and Alamosaurus.[10]

Discovery

The first fossils identified as Argentinosaurus were found in 1987 by a rancher in Argentina, who mistook the leg for a giant piece of petrified wood. A gigantic vertebra, approximately the size of a man, was also found.[1]

The type and only species, A. huinculensis, was described and published in 1993 by the Argentine palaeontologists José F. Bonaparte and Rodolfo Coria. Its more specific time-frame within the Cretaceous is the late Cenomanian faunal stage, ~96 to 94 million years ago.

The fossil discovery site is in the Huincul Formation of the Río Limay Subgroup in Neuquén Province, Argentina (the Huincul Formation was a member of the Río Limay Formation according to the naming of the time).[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentinosaurus

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"The length of the skeletal restoration mounted in Museo Carmen Funes is 39.7 metres (130 feet) long and 7.3 metres (24 feet) tall at the shoulder."

Size comparison, showing the isolated bones of the holotype specimen in white.
Each grid square = 1m [~3 feet]

[Steely Tom]

For some reason I read the headline as "No dino species identified.

I was thinking "what else, no habitat specified, not known how long ago it lived, what it's diet was, or why it died out?"

[Verginius Rufus]

It was the largest animal that walked the earth during its lifetime.

That's because after it died it was no longer able to walk the earth.

[C210N]

Proves my theory that all brontosaurus are thin on one end, much MUCH thicker in the middle, and thin on the other end.

That is my theory and what it is too.

[Right Brother]

It was the largest animal that walked the earth during its lifetime.

That position is currently held by Michael Moore.

[tomkat]

Just clicked on this thread to see if the Flat Erfers had consigned you to Hell yet.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 09/28/2018. Thanks ETL.