my little cousin got bit by a house spider and she was crying so i went to get some stuff to soothe and numb it but before i could even walk out the door i heard her quietly whisper ‘i can’t handle the responsibility of being spiderman’
Today is so exciting for a ton of fellow palaeontologists, students, researchers, and myself… Dreadnoughtus has finally been published!
The video above gives you guys a bit of history to where this titanosaur was discovered back in 2005. Almost ten years later and it’s finally gone public! With a name like Dreadnoughtus, it’s hard not to want to run around saying its awesome name.
These fossils spent a lot of time being excavated out of the matrix they were found in; around 4 years with multiple labs working tirelessly to clean and repair them. We had to get it done at least in some sort of quick time, right? With such a huge specimen, a lot of man power is required!
I’m so proud and happy for everyone involved that we can now share this gorgeous dinosaur to the public! It’s MASSIVE. The fossils are just mind blowing to look at, and now we continue to move forward with its preservation, education, and further research. It’ll be going back to Argentina next year.
You can read the article about Dreadnoughtus here on Drexel University’s website, and the scientific paper on Nature.com (which some super awesome people I know worked on).
Behold, the behemoth!
Meet the new (and aptly named) dinosaur species Dreadnoughtus, the most complete fossil of a massive sauropod ever unearthed, a creature so large and formidable that it was essentially invincible to the predators of its time, a dinosaur likely heavier than a 12-pack of bull elephants (and well heftier than a Boeing 737), a titan whose femur stood as high as me (and I’m no shrimp).
Scientists aren’t ready to say that this was the largest land animal EVAR, but it’s definitely the most massive creature that we have good data for. The completeness of this skeleton is simply remarkable! Paleontologists rarely find this many bones from the same single specimen. Some other sauropods may have in fact been more massive than Dreadnoughtus, but those bigger estimates are based on just a handful of bones. Well, not a handful, more like a truckful, but you get the idea.
When you’re done with the video above, head on over to National Geographic to read Brian Switek’s great summary of the news. Just imagine, if we’re still uncovering new species like this giant after centuries of sifting through the upper crust of Earth, imagine what else lies undiscovered…
Keep digging!
For anyone who missed it yesterday, my fellow team, museum, researchers and affiliates finally announced Dreadnoughtus to the public!
To say we’re excited to talk about it is quite the understatement. Hope you guys enjoy reading up on this massive sauropod!
"anime is racially ambiguous" aka "these Asian characters with Asian names and Asian cultural markers made by Asian people don’t look like the hideously caricaturized narrow stereotypes of Asians that I’ve been used to seeing."
