Colossal dinosaur cast goes on display in NY

The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in NY unveiled a titanosaur exhibit on Thursday, a creature so large it doesn’t fit within the museum hall.

The remains of the giant herbivore, which would have lived 100 million years ago, were excavated in the desert near La Flecha, 135 miles (216 kilometers) west of Trelew, by the Argentinian team. The titanosaur weighed some 70 tons, or as much as 10 African elephants, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

“Titanosaur fossils have been unearthed on every continent, and an abundance of discoveries in recent years has helped us appreciate the deep diversity of this group”, said Michael Novacek, the museum’s senior vice president and provost for science.

Because paleontologists were only able to uncover 70% of the ancient creature’s bones (an impressive amount, by any measure), the missing bones were recreated and modeled after bones belonging to close relatives of the titanosaur. The 122-foot-long and 140,000-pound dinosaur was unearthed in Patagonia.

A rancher initially tipped off the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio that he spotted something, but it was only when Pol’s team began digging that they realized they were onto something big. Scientists have always been exploring Argentina to track down Titanosaurs, which is a large sauropod among the last dinosaurs to walk the Earth.

The museum features several other famous exhibits, including a massive blue whale and a T-Rex that was featured in the 2006 movie, Night at the Museum. The time span ranges anywhere between a few years and centuries apart. Some of the best-preserved fossils will also be on display for a limited time.

Mark Norell, chairman and Macaulay Curator at the natural history museum, said that the animal is so new that it doesn’t even have an official species name so far. Paleontologists believe they died in three distinct periods, but it is not clear exactly when.

Though they found a few elements of the fossilized skull, the researchers chose to model the skull after a few well-preserved skulls of smaller animals related to titanosaurs, and “scaled it up to the size that this animal would be”, Norell said.

In addition to the replica, museumgoers can see original fossils of the dinosaur’s humerus, ulna, radius and scapula, on temporary display.

In all, the titanosaur would have stood about 20 feet (about 6 m) tall at its shoulder, and 46 feet (14 m) tall with neck held at a 45-degree angle.