Patagotitan New Biggest Dinosaur

A new discovery was just named.  It was actually discovered in 2012 by an old shepherd in Argentina.  This is a huge Sauropod or long neck dinosaur.  There are other similar Titanosaurs found in Argentina like Argentinosaurus.  But the newly named Patagotitan is about 12% bigger.  Now Patagotitan mayorum is considered the biggest land animal ever found.  In fact, they found over 200 fossilized bones and the bones from the largest individual actually show evidence that this dinosaur could have grown bigger.

Patagotitan mayorum

This humonguous animal was around 122 feet, 37 meters, long and weighed up to 77 tons, 69.8 metric tonnes.  The question has to be "How did the Titanosaurs get so big?"  There was a huge difference in the plant life 100 million years ago.  Flowering plants arrived on the Earth and there was huge amounts of food available for herbivores.  Not generally known, but even grass had appeared.  Grass first showed up 125 million years ago and by 100 million years ago (at the time of Patagotitan) there was an explosion of diversity of flowering plants.   There were still cycad trees, ferns, and conifers, and ginkgos, but newly added were more flowering broad-leaf plants like magnolia trees.  One recent study is showing evidence of flowering plant pollen pods dating clear back to 250 million years ago.  

So, if you are wondering why there is grass and broad=leaf trees in the above drawing, it is because they had already evolved AND diversified. 

COOL announcement:  A replica of the Patagotitan fossils can already be found at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, New York, USA.  Going there to see it is my new bucket list item.   

Below is the drawing I did a few months ago of the also gigantic, but no longer #1 Argentinosaurus.   There is strong evidence that these huge Sauropod dinosaurs laid eggs in a large group at a nesting area and then abandoned the babies to their fate...kind of like Sea Turtles do today.  

Argentinosaurus at a Nesting Site.  

Another huge dinosaur that was discovered in the USA was Sauroposeidon.  This large Sauropod was the TALLEST, but not the heaviest dinosaur to live on Earth.  It lived around the same time as Patagotitan, but it lived in North America, not South America.  Sauroposeidon was 60 feet, 18 meters, tall.  Patagotitan was about 32 feet, 10 meters tall.  Patagotitan was 20 feet, 6 meters, tall at the shoulder.  It most likely kept it's head more stretched out forward of the rest of the body.  It did not have the longer front legs of Brachiosaurs like Sauroposeidon.   

Sauroposeidon