The remains of what could be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe have been discovered in a back garden in Portugal.
Excavation work began in the garden of the city of Pombal in 2017, when the owner of the property noticed fragments of fossilized bone and contacted researchers from the University of Lisbon.
Earlier this month, Spanish and Portuguese paleontologists working at the site began unearthing the vertebrae and ribs of what they believe is a brachiosaurid sauropod.
Sauropods were the largest dinosaurs of all and the largest land animals that ever lived.
“It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position,” Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, told Phys . .org website.
Part of fossilized sauropod skeleton discovered. Photo: Instituto Dom Luiz (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal)
The group of sauropods – which includes the brontosaurus and the diplodocus – were herbivores, had long necks and walked on four legs.
The size of the bones found in the garden suggests that the dinosaur was 12 meters tall and 25 meters long.
Because of the natural position in which the skeleton was found, researchers hope that further excavation may uncover more parts of the same dinosaur.
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The skeleton was found in Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks, suggesting it is about 150m old.
“[This discovery] confirms that the Pombal region has an important fossil record of late Jurassic vertebrates, which in recent decades has provided the discovery of abundant material very significant for the knowledge of the continental fauna that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula about 145 million years ago years. Malafaia added.