July 14
A huge dinosaur the size of a double-decker bus has been dug up by scientists in Argentina.
The monster’s discovery reveals that giant dinosaurs evolved a staggering 30 million years earlier than expected. The creature changes our understanding of how this group of species became so large.
Its growth was fuelled by bird-like lungs that would have made it remarkably light on its feet. The dino was about 33 feet long, 14 feet tall and weighed up to ten tons.
It roamed South America around 210 million years ago during the Late Triassic. With this discovery, we can see the first steps toward gigantism occurred 30 million years before the giants dominated practically the entire planet.
Dinosaurs first appeared around 230 million years ago, and it was believed to have taken them about 50 million years to become massive.
The new find shows it happened in less than half that time. The plant-eater, described in Nature Ecology & Evolution, is an ancestor of its famously freakish titanosaur cousins Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, renowned for their enormous necks and tails.
These iconic dinosaurs stretched to 130 feet and weighed up to 80 tons.