Researchers studying the remains of an enormous dinosaur a creature that was bigger than seven bull elephants have given it an equally colossal name — Dreadnoughtus, or “fearing nothing.”
Scientists hope its unusually well-preserved bones will help reveal secrets about some of the largest animals ever to walk the Earth. The four-legged beast, with a long neck and powerful 8.8-metre tail, stretched about 25.9 metres long and weighed about 65 tonnes. That’s more than seven times the weight of even a plus-size male African elephant.
Kenneth Lacovara of Drexel University in Philadelphia found the specimen in Argentina’s southern Patagonia in 2005. Lacovara and colleagues describe the plant-eating behemoth in a study released on Thursday by the journal Scientific Reports . He said the bones were probably around 75 million to 77 million years old. ( In picture: a technician next to the femur of the dinosaur.)
