North America's Biggest Dinosaur Unearthed in New Mexico

North America's biggest dinosaur has been unearthed. And it looks like it once called New Mexico home. The revelation of the massive titanosaurus was documented in a recent issue of Acta Palaeontologica Polonica published on Dec. 6. Co-authors Denver Fowler, a researcher from Montana State University, and Robert M. Sullivan, senior curator of paleontology and geology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg describe their discovery of an enormous vertebra from a sauropod dinosaur known as Alamosaurus sanjuanensis. A cousin of the Diplodocus, the Alamosaurus habited the New Mexico region about 69 million years ago. "When we got back to camp, we started thinking: How did this compare to the biggest specimens from South America?" Fowler told FoxNews.com. "This was so much bigger than the other material of Alamosaurus that had been found up to this time." Fowler and Sullivan stumbled upon the bones during a dig in the New Mexico desert back in 2004. At first, no digging was necessary since the rock had eroded away enough to expose the bones to the air. But after the full bone had been freed, Fowler said the trip back to the truck was the hardest part of the entire process. The Alamosaurus vertebra that Fowler and Sullivan found puts the dinosaur in the same category as other Titanosaurus sauropods discovered in South America – the Argentinosaurus and the Puertasaurus which both could weigh up to 80 – 100 metric tons. Fowler says that the Alamosaurus they discovered could potentially be the same size...more