【1998 Archives】

998 Archivesbiggest dinosaur ever to walk the Earth finally has a name.

It's called Patagotitan mayorum, according to a study published inProceedings of the Royal Society B.

The titanosaur weighed 76 tons and stretched 122 feet long. To put that in perspective, National Geographicdescribed the dinosaur as weighing the same as 12 African elephants.

It lived around 102 million years ago and was first discovered in Argentina in 2012. Its ribs, vertebrae, leg and arm bones, and part of its hip were unearthed a few years later. The beast would have lived in modern-day Argentina during the Cretaceous period.

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The new study looked at the giant titanosaur's anatomy and how it evolved with such a lumbering body mass.

It concluded that Patagotitan hit the upper limit of how large a land animal can get, so don't expect to see it dwarfed by another dinosaur anytime soon.

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