About 92 million years ago, “Cooper” was trapped in the mud. The trash sealed the fate of the huge long-necked leaf-eating dinosaur until 2007 when some beast bones were excavated under the cattle and sheep station near the Australian town of Eromanga. 119.
After 14 years of painstaking research and analysis in Southwest Queensland, this huge sauropod specimen, known for its leg bones and hip bones, was officially described and named by its discoverer for the first time. Cooper’s nickname is out of date. Friends, it’s time to get to know Australotitan cooperensis, a Titanosaurus that ruled the earth during the Cretaceous period about 92 to 96 million years ago. The name Australotitan means “the giant of the south,” and cooperensis represents the area where the fossils were found. Researchers at the Queensland Museum in Australia and the Eromanga Natural History Museum detailed the prototype specimens—the specimens used to describe this new species—in an article published in PeerJ on Monday.
Robyn Mackenzie, a paleontologist at the Eromanga Natural History Museum, said: “This new Titanosaurus is Australia’s largest dinosaur represented by bones.” Research from Australotitan cooperensis shows how big this beast is. Over the years, the research team has slowly excavated Cooper’s fossil fragments and analyzed them to understand this huge creature better. They found many different bones and bone fragments from the legs and hips of the Titans. With the help of 3D computer analysis, the team began to unravel Cooper’s story and estimate its size, length, and quality. “The 3D scans we created allowed me to transport thousands of kilograms of dinosaur bones on a 7-kilogram laptop,” said Scott Hocknull, a paleontologist at the Queensland Museum who helped discover Cooper. The Titanic may be an understatement. Cooper is nearly 100 feet long, roughly equivalent to the length of an Airbus A318, and surpassing the tallest giraffe ever. , As a whole, it will extend to Cooper’s hips. Imagine the extra height of Cooper’s neck!
According to the measurement results of other sauropods, Cooper’s weight may be close to 70 tons, about 10 times that of the African elephant. This puts it in the top 5 among the heaviest sauropod dinosaurs ever found and in the top 15 in terms of length. The bones also show that other sauropods trampled his bones after Cooper found his fate in the mud. A potentially grim ending. To make sure they found a completely new species, the team also compared these bones with the previously described bones of the sauropod dinosaurs Wintonotitan, Diamantinasaurus, and Savannasaurus from the area, which Hocknull and others have unearthed and been in. Ten years.
The subtle differences in these biological bones show the difference between Austrodon and other Titanosaurus. The discovery site is located near Eromanga and has become a hot spot for Australian dinosaur discovery. In 2004, Robyn’s son Sandy discovered an unusual stone and threw it into the back of his car. In the end, his father took it to the museum for analysis, and it was confirmed as a dinosaur fossil. But this is only the beginning. “The discovery of Australia’s largest dinosaur was completely unexpected.
It turns out that this is just the tip of the iceberg of many major dinosaur discoveries that have occurred since then,” Robin Mackenzie said. Mackenzie and her family built the Eromanga Natural History Museum on the back of the discovery, which now proudly displays Cooper. The team has found many other Titanosaurus specimens, but they are not sure whether they are from other Australia. Or other species. But the excavation work will continue on the giant’s land.
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