14 DAY TRIAL // University of Pennsylvania paleontologists announce the discovery of a new species of behemoth dinosaur, which apparently lived on Earth around 100 million years ago. The Early Cretaceous lizard was a giant, albeit a calm, herbivore one. It is currently unclear precisely how large the animal was.
According to early measurements, the dinosaur, called Yongjinglong datangi – part of a group called Titanosaur (the titanic dinosaurs) – was around 15 to 18 meters (50 to 60 feet) long. However, scientists believe that the specimen they analyzed for this study was a juvenile, so its actual measurements as an adult could have been even larger.
Experts have thus far been able to discover fossils from a single specimen, in northwestern China. Details of the bones, and how they might have fit together in the ancient giant lizard, were published in the latest issue of the open-access journal PLoS ONE, e! Science News reports.
In addition to adding a new species of dinosaurs to scientific catalogs, this study also helps confirm an older theory, which suggested that sauropods, including Titanosaurs, were a dominant class of reptiles on Earth during the Early Cretaceous Period. Previous data had only been collected from North America, and were insufficient to demonstrate the global spread of sauropods.