Dinosaur fossils found in Argentina could belong to the largest creature ever to have walked the Earth

A team of researchers with Naturales y Museo, Universidad de Zaragoza and Universidad Nacional del Comahue has found evidence that suggests the remains of a dinosaur discovered in Argentina in 2012 may represent a creature that was the largest ever to walk the Earth.

In their paper published in the journal Cretaceous Research, the group describes the fossilized remains that have been found so far and what they have revealed.

The largest creature ever to live is believed to be the blue whale—the largest of which grow to 33.6 meters long.

The biggest land creatures are believed to have been the dinosaurs—of them, the titanosaur (as their name suggests) is believed to be the largest.

And of those, Argentinosaurus represents the largest that left enough evidence for it to be classified the heaviest—at approximately 36.5 meters in length and weighing in at a hundred tons, it would have dwarfed today’s land animals by a considerable amount.

Researchers studying Patagotitan fossils (another titanosaur found in Patagonia) have suggested some of them might have broken the record for the largest, but there was insufficient fossil evidence to prove it.

In either case, the researchers studying the new remains have begun to believe that they have found an even bigger titanosaur.

Thus far, the dinosaur has been dated back to 98 million years ago (putting it in the Late Jurassic to the early Cretaceous).

The fossils found include 24 vertebrae, all belonging to a giant tail, parts of a pelvis and a pectoral girdle.

The huge size of each suggests the dinosaur was a very large titanosaur—one that might be bigger than Argentinosaurus. That claim cannot be confirmed, however, until leg bones are found. Their size will allow the researchers to make estimates of the animals’ body weight.

Titanosaurs belong to the sauropod family, which means they were herbivores, had massive bodies and long necks and tails.

Such dinosaurs would have had few worries from meat-eating enemies if they managed to grow to full size.

Their fossils have been found on all continents except Antarctica. The researchers conclude by noting that more digging in the area will likely reveal more fossils from the same dinosaur and perhaps evidence of its true size.

Giants and beings of unknown origin were recorded by the ancients

Found in many regions of the world, cave paintings have been a valuable source of information for understanding the lifestyle and beliefs of early humans. Some depict scenarios that are fairly simple to understand, such as men hunting or entire families in a village.

The cave paintings discovered on the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau in southern Algeria, are a major conundrum for scholars.

They sketched what they observed, assuming that ancient humans did not have the ability to imagine such art: “One of the images appears to portray an extraterrestrial pursuing human being towards an oval object, comparable to a small spaceship.”

To see up close what many consider to be the world’s finest museum of prehistoric art, visitors must journey to the parched plains of the Sahara desert. Specifically in southern Algeria, 700 metres above sea level, is the Tassili plateau.

It is feasible to reach one of the earliest sources of information on ancient terrestrial life by traversing many cliffs. Years of wear and tear, as well as the strong forces of nature, have rendered the road nearly inaccessible. Rock formations that resemble enormous stone sentinels may be seen.

It is precisely in this location where caverns and more caves, with around 1,500 cave paintings dating from 10 to 15 thousand years, come into play.

They are thought to have been created by humans who lived on the site throughout the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic periods.

Some paintings make sense, but others are enthralling, leaving you to ponder the true meaning for hours on end. First and foremost, everything discovered in this remote location supports what was originally thought about the Sahara Desert: this location was once bustling with life. A diverse range of plant and animal species coexisted in this area, as well as in many other parts of Africa and the world.

The patterns on ledges and rocks appear to imply that flowers, olive groves, cypresses, and other species grew in a fertile and vibrant environment. Furthermore, the current wildlife included antelopes, lions, ostriches, elephants, and rivers teeming with crocodiles. Unquestionably, a totally different scenario than what is now occurring in the Sahara.

Similarly, human beings can be seen in their daily activities in over a thousand primitive depictions discovered in Tassili.

Men hunting, swimming, and farming, as well as other routine activities in an archaic civilization. Nothing out of the ordinary for numerous experts and scholars who have visited this genuine book of stones.

Now, there are certain fascinating aspects that even the most sceptical brains can detect. To begin with, the tonality of the paintings is considerably more diverse than that which was typically used at that period. The rock art scenes from the same time period are not as vibrant as those seen here.

The images that appear to portray creatures wearing helmets and diving suits, quite similar to current astronauts, are the most stunning and difficult to accept. Furthermore, other pictures depict humanoids with enormous round heads and excessively large limbs.

Everything appears to imply that these strange and perplexing artworks show that creatures from other worlds visited our planet in the distant past. It is thought that primitive humans were unable to envision this type of art. Instead, they just sketched what they saw, which became part of their memories.

This entire collection of cave paintings might be the oldest evidence of a meeting between mankind and creatures from other worlds. In fact, one of the photos appears to depict a group of aliens escorting several people towards an oval object like a small spaceship.

Some experts who have visited the site believe that the early painters witnessed something unusual and left pictorial proof of it. These depictions of creatures with huge round heads are of ‘Tassili’s gods of unknown origin.’

The first dinosaurs may have laid soft eggs without hard shells

The new finding forces scientists to rethink how dinosaur eggs evolved. The earliest dinosaur eggs were more like leathery turtle eggs than hard bird’s eggs. That’s the conclusion of a new study of fossilized dino embryos.

A team of palaeontologists studied embryos from two types of dinosaurs. One came from early in dinosaur history. The other lived about 150 million years later. Both sets of eggs were enclosed by soft shells. The researchers described their findings online on June 17 in Nature. It’s the first report of soft-shelled dino eggs.

“This new hypothesis provides an answer to these problems,” says Stephen Brusatte. He is a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He was not involved in the work.  Until now, palaeontologists thought that all dinosaurs laid hard eggs.

Minerals such as calcite make such shells hard and help them to fossilize. But scientists couldn’t explain a lack of fossil eggs from the earliest dinosaurs. Nor did they know why tiny structures within eggshells are so different across the three main types of dinosaurs.

Further analyses of these and other dinosaur eggs suggest that hard eggshells evolved three separate times. The team thinks the long-necked sauropods, plant-eating ornithischians (Or-nuh-THISH-ee-uns) and fierce theropods each evolved their own hard shells.

Unearthing soft dino eggs

The researchers analyzed a clutch of dinosaur eggs found in Mongolia. The eggs are thought to come from Protoceratops. That was a sheep-sized ornithischian. The fossil dates to between 72 million and 84 million years ago.

The team also analyzed an egg found in Argentina. It is between 209 million and 227 million years old. Scientists believe it to be Mussaurus. It was a sauropod ancestor.

The soft eggshells weren’t easy to spot. “When they are preserved, they’d only be preserved as films,” says Mark Norell. An author of the new study works as a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

When his team examined the fossilized embryos, they noticed egg-shaped halos around the skeletons. On closer look, those halos had thin brown layers. But the layers were not evenly arranged. That suggested the material was biological, not made solely of minerals. Minerals tend to create very orderly patterns.

Before a few years ago, “people thought that everything that’s soft and squishy decays away immediately post mortem,” says study author Jasmina Wiemann. She is a palaeontologist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. But growing evidence suggests that soft biological material can fossilize. The right conditions can preserve soft tissues, she says.

The team used lasers to probe the chemical composition of the brown layers. They used a method that would not damage the fossils. This Raman spectroscopy shines laser light on a sample, then measures how the light bounces off.

The properties of the scattered light show what type of molecules are present. Wiemann has used the approach to identify pigments in dinosaur eggs.

The researchers compared the chemical fingerprints of these fossilized eggs with those of eggs from hard-shelled dinosaurs. They also compared them with eggs from present-day animals. The Protoceratops and Mussaurus eggs were most similar to modern soft-shelled eggs.

Next, the scientists combined eggshell data with what’s known about the family trees of extinct and living egg-laying animals. From that, the researchers calculated the most likely scenario for the evolution of dinosaur eggs.

Early dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs, they determined. Hard shells evolved in later dinos. And it happened several times — at least once in each major limb of the dino family tree.

These results suggest it may be time to rethink dinosaur parenting, says Wiemann. In the past, many ideas came from studying fossils of theropods, such as T. rex. For example, some of them sat on eggs in open nests, like modern birds. But if eggs evolved separately in different lines of dinos, parental behaviour may have, too.

“If you have a soft-shelled egg,” Norell says, “you’re burying your eggs. [There’s] not going to be a lot of parental care.” In some ways, he now suspects, dinosaurs that laid soft eggs might resemble early reptiles more than they do birds.

Now that palaeontologists know what to look for, the search is on for more soft-shelled dino eggs. Palaeontologist Gregory Erickson works at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He says, “I would not be surprised if other people come forward with other specimens.”