History

The Largest Australian Dinosaur

It was 25 m (82 ft) long

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

4th of May 2007, 06:45 GMT

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A giant titanosaur representation, based on the fossilized bones of Australia's largest dinosaur

Australia has been regarded as rich in dinosaurs as it is today in evolved mammals: quite poor, that is. But a new discovery

sheds more light on the dinosaur fauna of this now isolated continent.

Researchers presented on Thursday the bones of two 82 ft (25 m) long Titanosaurs.
These are the largest dinosaurs ever discovered in Australia and belong to the group of sauropods (the long-legged, long-necked and long-tailed giant plant eaters).

The fossilized bones were discovered in 2005 and 2006 near the town of Eromanga, 620 mi (1,000 km) west of the Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland. The fossils were put on display at the Queensland Museum.

"These are the largest bones ever discovered in Australia," said museum curator Scott Hocknull.

The largest bone was a humerus (arm's bone) from a foreleg, which is 5 ft (1.5 m) long and 220 pounds (100 kg) heavy.
"They would have been about two buses in length," explained Hocknull.

The sauropods were rather primitive herbivorous, living during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous eras (200 to 100 million years ago) and they vanished before the disappearance of all dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. As they were more primitive, they existed before the split of the continents, so their fossils are found all over the world.

"The two recent finds - nicknamed Cooper and George - indicated the animals were about 23 feet (7 meters) longer than the previous biggest reported titanosaur whose remains were found in Australia, also in Queensland in 1999." said Hocknull.

Rancher Stuart Mackenzie, who participated on the excavations, reported he stumbled across the fossils while mustering cattle on a motorbike on his property in 2005.

"The very first bone we found was the most exciting because until you actually have it verified by the museum you don't actually know you've got a bone, you just think it's a rock," Mackenzie said.

"From then on it's just ballooned ... we've found more sites and then we've stumbled across this one (the humerus), and it was the daddy of them all".

TAGS:

dinosaur | sauropod | fossil

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