Largest land animal in earths history to date!
Close your eyes and think of that long neck dinosaur that you thought was the biggest thing on earth growing up... now get ready to replace that dinosaur with a new one.
Two years ago a new skeleton was discovered by a farmer in Argentina and then excavated by a group of paleontologists BBC's David Attenborough. Its part of the elite group of largest sauropod dinosaurs on earth called Titanosaurs and this one has been dubbed, "The Titanosaur" and has become its name . Dinosaurs so large they literally shook the ground when they moved.
Weighing close to 100 tons and over 120 feet long! Argentinosaurus has been found in a variety of sizes In Argentina but none as large as this one. Scientists will probably never know for sure what the largest and smallest dinosaurs that lived are but this is the largest that we know of right now. But as we have seen recently, a new "largest dinosaur ever found" is discovered every 5 years or so. Its hard to believe that these animals could get any bigger but time will tell.
This animal's heart must have been immense. from what we know, the heart must have been at least 6 feet in circumference. It would have had to shift 90 liters of blood with every beat, and it would have had to repeat that beat every 5 seconds. The heart would have weighed more than 3 grown men and would have been extremely powerful.
Its thought that the heart would have had 4 chambers like a bird to be able to bump blood to the head at high pressure and to the lungs at low pressure. This allowed the animal to keep every part its anatomy fully circulated with blood.
Its bone structure is very interesting. The inside of their bones were cancelous. Meaning a honey cone like mesh-work of sponge tissue. Which made the bones extremely strong and forgiving under its massive weight. This of it like picking up a dog and then picking up a a bird of the same size. The bird would be lighter even thought it was the same size as the dog. This soft meshing inside is the only reason these animals were able to grow this big. If the Titanosaur had solid bones, it would have been crushed by its own weight.
One of these Titanosaurs was recently displayed in New York at the American Natural History Museum. Take a look at the images below. Its mind-blowing how large these animals were.
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