Queensland, June 10: A new species of huge titanosaurs (a type of dinosaurs) has been discovered in Australia. Titanosaurs are a type of sauropods. They have long necks and tails, and fat, stumpy legs. The titanosaur was named Australotitan cooperensis or “the southern titan”. It measures about 16-21 feet in height and 82-98 feet in length. It must have weighed around 80 tons. The titanosaurs must have lived more than 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. They are among the fifteen largest dinosaurs ever discovered on earth. The fossilised bones of the dinosaur were found in 2006 near the town of Eromanga in southwest Queensland near the Cooper Creek. Therefore, it was nicknamed as “Cooper”.
It took nearly fifteen years to confirm that it was the biggest titanosaur found in Australia by paleontologists of Eromanga Natural History Museum and the Queensland Museum. The latest digital technology of 3-D scan helped to compare the size of bone with the other closely related species and arrive at this conclusion.
With news inputs from Alka Singh
