New GIANT Dinosaur - Puertasaurus reuili
Puertasaurus reuili is the newly named gigantic sauropod that was discovered in Argentina. National Geographic has the full story: Giant Dinosaur Discovered in Argentina. They also published five images related to the story.
Lead researcher, Fernando Novas, named the titanosaur after the fossil-hunters, Pablo Puerto and Santiago Reuil, who found and prepared the fossil.
His paper, Giant titanosaur (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia [pdf], was published in the Journal of the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences.
The Hairy Museum of Natural History has an excellent blog post discussing the massive size of P. reuili and comparing it to the mythical Amphicoelias fragillimus.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Saurischia
Suborder: Sauropodomorpha
Infraorder: Sauropoda
Family: Titanosauridae
Genus: Puertasaurus
If you like sauropods you may be interested in two other recently described dinosaurs: the mini Europasaurus holgeri, and the long necked Erketu ellisoni
(Illustration and photo: Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences PR)
on August 19th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Thanks for the link to my post! After looking at the photo you posted I double-checked the paper and realized that there was an error in the scale of one of the figures. I’ve added a revision to my original post, and created what I hope is a more accurate size comparison.