Meet Patagotitan Mayorum, the Largest Dinosaur Ever
It was almost 40 metres long, weighed as much as 10 elephants and could have reached its lunch on the roof of a five-storey building.
[Initially published on Passport2017.ca on August 10, 2017]
To me and, I assume, most every other late 20-something raised with a beloved copy of Jurassic Park on VHS, the Tyrannosaurus rex epitomizes both the survival instinct and menace we’ve all come to associate with dinosaurs. Never mind that it had ridiculously short arms, probably couldn’t run and was fabulously adorned with colourful feathers — everyone knows it was a fearsome killing machine, baddest and meanest of the prehistoric world’s giant reptiles. (Disregard Jurassic Park III‘s Spinosaurus and Jurassic World‘s not-even-real Indominus rex: those movies were garbage.)
Although of course the T. rex was not so giant, at least not relative to some other beasts of its time — and now especially in comparison to a newly discovered Titanosaur that makes “the scary Tyrannosaurus rex look like a munchkin.”
The story begins in 2013, when an Argentinian shepherd found a fossilized bone protruding from a rock on the farm where he worked. Knowing Argentina, and specifically Patagonia, as fossil-rich lands, the farm owners invited local palaeontologists to examine the remains. It took two weeks for a team of them to dig out what became the largest thighbone ever found: 2.4 metres long, from end to end. It clearly belonged to a member of the Sauropod suborder — long-necked quadrupedal behemoths like the Diplodocus or the Brachiosaurus. But no known Sauropod had bones that could compare in size, hinting at the discovery of a whole new species of titan. Eventually, the palaeontologists dug up the bones of seven specimens.
The Patagotitan Mayorum, the biggest animal to ever walk the Earth, had been officially discovered. The 37-metre-long dinosaur weighed 70 metric tonnes (roughly as much as 10 African elephants) and was a slow-moving herbivore, according to Diego Pol of the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum in Argentina, who co-authored the study announcing its discovery.
“I don’t think they were scary at all. They were probably massive big slow-moving animals. Getting up. Walking around. Trying to run. It’s really challenging for large animals,” Pol told the CBC. Their necks were probably held horizontally most of the time, but could reach some 14 metres upwards for food. For comparison, today’s giraffes can reach tree leaves up to 5 metres high.
It’s hard to determine exactly how the Argentina specimens met their demise, but according to the BBC, 80 carnivore teeth were also found on the site. However, those likely belonged to scavengers, as any predator trying to sink its fangs into a live Patagotitan Mayorum would’ve swiftly regretted the mistake. “They were too strong,” Pol said. “It would have been too risky for a carnivore.”
If you’d like to see it for yourself, a replica of the Patagotitan Mayorum‘s complete skeleton — courtesy of Ontario’s Research Casting International — is currently on display at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Hurry up, though: the humongous herbivore is the latest title holder of “world’s largest dinosaur,” but likely won’t be the last.
