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Australotitan coprensis is the new species confirmed by paleontologists in Australia. It is the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Australia. Vlad Konstantinov and Scott Hocknall / Eromanga Museum of Natural History hides the caption
Swap Caption Vlad Konstantinov and Scott Hocknall / Iromanga Museum of Natural History
Australotitan coprensis is the new species confirmed by paleontologists in Australia. It is the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Australia.
Vlad Konstantinov and Scott Hocknall Museum of Natural History
Researchers in Australia have confirmed the discovery of the largest species of dinosaur ever found in Australia.
Australotitan coprensis was about 80 to 100 feet long and 16 to 21 feet wide at the hip. It weighed between 25 and 81 tons. For comparison, Tyrannosaurus Rex was about 40 feet long and 12 feet long.
Paleontologists involved in the discovery say it is among the 15 largest dinosaurs ever discovered in the world and ranks comparable in size to the giants found in South America.
The creature’s first fossilized bones were excavated in 2006 and 2007, but only now, after years of analysis, have paleontologists from the Queensland Museum and Iromanga Museum of Natural History been able to confirm that the bones are from Australia’s largest dinosaur.
The results were published in the peer-reviewed journal PeerJ on Monday. Scott Hocknall, a paleontologist at the Queensland Museum, was one of the authors.
Scott Hocknall and Iromanga Museum of Natural History director Robin McKenzie hold a model of what a dinosaur humerus would have looked like next to the fossilized remains of a humerus. Iromanga Museum of Natural History Hide caption
Switch caption Eromanga Museum of Natural History
Scott Hocknall and Iromanga Museum of Natural History director Robin McKenzie hold a model of what a dinosaur humerus would have looked like next to the fossilized remains of a humerus.
Iromanga Museum of Natural History
“It took all that time because it’s hard work. You have to take the bones out of the ground, you have to prepare the fossils and then you have to study them and compare them with all the other fossils. Dinosaur species are all over the world,” Hocknoll told Australia’s ABC News.
“In Australia, it is certainly the largest outback walker animal ever,” he said. “This is huge. This is a wonderful beast. Imagine something the size of a basketball court walking around on the floor.”
“I think it’s a wonderful, wonderful discovery,” says Diego Bol, head of the department of palaeontology at the Museum of Paleontologico Egidio Veroglio in Argentina, who made similar finds but was not involved in the Australian discovery.
Researchers excavate at the 2007 Cooper dinosaur dig site near Iromanga in the Australian Outback. Gary Kranich/Queensland Museum hides comment
Toggle caption Gary Kranich/Queensland Museum
Researchers excavate at the 2007 Cooper dinosaur dig site near Iromanga in the Australian Outback.
Gary Kranich/Queensland Museum
The dinosaur was found near the town of Iromanga in southwest Queensland in rural Australia. The researchers named it Cooper after the area near where it was found, Cooper Creek.
Australotitans lived 92 million to 96 million years ago in southwest Queensland, which at that time was still associated with Antarctica, the Hoknoll and the Queensland Museum, wrote Assistant Senior Researcher at the Queensland Museum Rochelle Lawrence.
It is part of the lineage of dinosaurs called titanosaurians, which are found on most continents.
But Paul told NPR that so far, all “very large” titanosaurs have been found in the Patagonia region of South America. “This is very interesting because it is the first confirmation that very large titanosaurs also inhabited Australia,” he says.
Ball says these large dinosaurs may have lived in “vast expanses” across a contiguous land area including what is now South America, Antarctica and Australia.
“It also means that if we go to Antarctica and dig into the right rocks…we’ll probably find giant titanosaurs living in Antarctica as well. So I found this very exciting.”
Illustration of what Australutean coprensis would have looked like. It was about 80 to 100 feet tall and 16 to 21 feet tall. Vlad Konstantinov/Eromanga Museum of Natural History hides the caption
Caption switch Vlad Konstantinov / Eromanga Museum of Natural History
Illustration of what Australutean coprensis would have looked like. It was about 80 to 100 feet tall and 16 to 21 feet tall.
Vlad Konstantinov / Iromanga Museum of Natural History
Australotitan coprensis is now a new species of a type of dinosaur called sauropods, which had long necks and tails, as well as four legs, and was plant-eating. The researchers say the new species is closely related to three other sauropods found in Australia that date back to the same time period.
“We found that the australotitans were the largest in the family, followed by the wintonotetans with large thighs and long legs, while the smaller sauropods, Diamantinosaurus and Savannasaurus, were shorter in stature and more firmly fixed,” Hocknall said in a statement.
As part of their research, the Australian team used a new 3D-scanning technology to scan bones from australottitans and compare them to those of similar species. Australian and Argentine researchers agree that the new technology has opened the doors to information sharing. Previously, paleontologists may have needed to travel the world to look at fossils in person. The super resolution that exists now, says Ball, is like having real bone in your computer.
The Eromanga Museum of Natural History says its team has found other dinosaur bones in the area, including those recently discovered that need to be studied to determine if they belong to a new species.
“Discoveries like this are just the tip of the iceberg,” Hocknall said in the statement. “Our ultimate goal is to find the evidence that tells the changing story of Queensland, hundreds of millions of years in the making.”
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