Excavations at an oasis in the Egyptian desert have revealed huge fossil bones of what paleontologists say appears to have been the second most massive dinosaur that ever lived, according to the journal Science, cited by the New York Times.
It said that scientists estimate the new species, named Paralititan stromeri, could have stretched 80 to 100 feet long and weighed as much as 70 tons - heavier than an M-1A1 tank.
The discovery could revive vigorous fossil hunting in a previously neglected area that the researchers say must have been "dinosaur heaven," teeming with the large reptiles when it was a swampy landscape more than 90 million years ago.
In a today's issue of the journal Science, the researchers said the partial skeleton represented a new species of titanosaurid, a group of long-necked, long-tailed, plant-eating dinosaurs. The name Paralititan means "tidal giant," reflecting the supposed coastal environment in which it lived and died.
A collection by Dr. Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, the University of Munich geologist and paleontologist whose discoveries before World War I first called attention to the site, were destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on Germany during World War II, said the report.
The new discoveries were made last year by an American group led by Joshua B. Smith, a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennyslvania – Albawaba.com
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