New dinosaur species confirmed as largest ever found in Australia
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A simulated illustration of Australotitan cooperensis. Photo: Queensland Museum
A new dinosaur species discovered in Australia's Queensland region is the largest dinosaur ever found in the country — and it's among the biggest in the world, researchers announced Monday in the journal PeerJ.
The big picture: Australotitan cooperensis, nicknamed Cooper, is believed to have walked the Earth 90 million years ago. Scientists estimate that Cooper would have "weighed about 70 tons, measured two stories tall and extended to about the length of a basketball court," the New York Times notes.
- Cooper's bones were first discovered in Australia's Eromanga Basin in 2007, but paleontologists from the Queensland Museum and Eromanga Natural History Museum have only just officially classified it, according to the Guardian.
What they're saying: "We're pretty excited about it because it's just the start of what we think might be a new wave of discoveries of very large dinosaur species in Australia," said study co-author Scott Hocknull, a paleontologist at Brisbane's Queensland Museum, to the Times.
