Rio de Janeiro - South American researchers found one of the three largest dinosaur fossils ever discovered and believe they have found a new species, palaeontologists said in media reports Tuesday.
The animal, thought to have lived 88 million years ago in northern Patagonia, in modern-day Argentina, apparently belongs to a dinosaur type that was previously unknown, Jorge Calvo said.
The 32- to 34-metre-long dinosaur was named Futalognkosaurus dukei to honour the Mapuche indigenous communities of Patagonia. In the Mapuche language, dukei means 'the gigantic chief of the lizards,' researchers said when presenting their founding in Rio de Janeiro. The name is also meant to honour the US company Duke Energy Corp, which financed part of the project.
A student who discovered 'a small piece of bone' during an expedition six years ago at the Los Barreales Lake in Patagonia is responsible for the development, researchers said.
With little hope of finding anything, she started to dig and soon the small piece of bone was a 1-metre-long vertebra.
'This is a new species, a new group,' Argentine palaeontologist Juan Porfiri said.
He said 70 per cent of the dinosaur was found, compared to an average of 10 per cent of the specimen in similar findings.
'We have all the vertebrae from the first in the neck to the first in the tail, which will allow us to re-evaluate other dinosaurs,' Brazilian expert Alexandre Kellner said.
Scientists also found fossils of fish, leaves and other dinosaurs at the site, Kellner said.
The animal is thought have belonged to the plant-eating Titanosauria family.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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