In today’s Australia lived ‘Cooper’, with the scientific name Australutean coprensis, and she was wonderful. Really great. Hence the name, which can be translated as “southern titan”.
“Using comparisons of the preserved limbs, we estimate that this new titanosauride was one of the five largest in the world,” Robin McKenzie, a paleontologist at the Iromanga Museum of Natural History in Queensland, told AFP.
The fossilized remains were found as early as 2007, but only now paleontologists have determined that they belong to their own species.
Australotitan coprensis lived about 100 million years ago and is believed to have been between 5 and 6.5 meters in height and 25 to 30 meters in length.
The titanosaurids belong to the order sauropods. They were – despite their size – peaceful herbivores with distinctive elongated necks. Among them are the largest wild animals known to science. Including Argentinosaurus, which was discovered in the 1990s and is probably the largest of them all.
The giant herbivore lived about 100 million years ago in what is today Australia. Pictured, paleontologists Scott Hocknall and Robin McKenzie are reconstructing the humerus. Photo: Rochelle Lawrence/TT
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