Argentinosaurus

Argentinosaurus

Pronunciation:
AR-gent-eeno-sore-us
Name meaning:
'Argentina lizard'
Argentinosaurus
sauropod silhouette
Type of dinosaur:
sauropod
Length:
35.0m
Weight:
70000kg
Diet:
herbivorous herbivorous food icon
Teeth:
for stripping vegetation from branches
Food:
tough plant material
How it moved:
on four legs
When it lived:
Late Cretaceous, 90 million years ago
Found in:
Argentina

The exact size of Argentinosaurus is hard to estimate due to the incompleteness of its fossilised remains. But it is one of the largest land animals ever found. It carried on growing throughout most of its lifetime. Other similarly massive dinosaurs include Patagotitan and Puertasaurus. They were all titanosaurs, a type of sauropod.

Argentinosaurus probably used its long neck to sweep the ground or to reach high up in search of vegetation. The hatchlings of Argentinosaurus would have taken 15 years to grow to adulthood and in that time they would have been very vulnerable to predators, such as Giganotosaurus.

Taxonomic details

Taxonomy:
Dinosauria, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Sauropoda, Eusauropoda, Neosauropoda, Macronaria, Camarasauromorpha, Titanosauriformes, Titanosauria
Named by:
Bonaparte and Coria (1993)
Type species:
huinculensis

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