Record dinosaur find

25 February 2004

TERUEL – Fossils have been discovered of possibly the biggest dinosaur ever, weighing 50 tonnes and 35 metres long, it was announced Wednesday.

The remains were found in Riodeva, near Teruel, which is close to Valencia in north-east Spain.

The discovery was announced by the Palaeontology Foundation of Teruel.

They claimed that it could be one of the biggest discovered in Eurasia and the world.

Luis Alcalá, director of the Foundation, told a press conference Wednesday that the humerus bone measured 1.78 metres and had a nail 30cm wide, suggesting that the animal was 35 metres long and weighed up to 50 tonnes.

He said that the fossils, found in the Barrihonda area, were of the 17th such creature
discovered in this area. It took up to a year and a half of work.

Researchers covered an area of 400 sq m finding the bones.

The dinosaur still does not have a name nor has been identified even though it could  ave been similar to a herbivore which was discovered in Egypt which existed  between 110 and 130 million years ago.

Alcalá said the species of this dinosaur has never been discovered in Europe or in the world.

The research team had to reconstruct the  bones from thousands of fragments.

Alcalá said the dinosaur discovered in Spain could not be compared with another large animal discovered in Argentina called the Argentinosaurus. 

The dinosaur found in Argentina was thought to have had a different sized humerus bone, though this was a hypothetical calculation as the actual bones have not been found.

Until now the biggest humerus bone found from a dinosaur anywhere in the
world measured 1.69 metres. This was the herbivore found in Egypt.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

    Subject: Spanish news