The Biggest Dinosaur Ever Found Is On Display in New York

Some 95 to 100 million years ago, giants roamed the forests of Patagonia, Argentina. These long-necked dinosaurs—aptly named titanosaurs—were longer than Jumbo Jets and weighed about 70 tons, making even dinosaurs like Brontosaurus look small in comparison.

It's one thing to picture these dimensions in your head, but another to behold such a behemoth up close. That's why the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York has welcomed a cast of a newly discovered species—the largest ever found—as its newest special exhibit: The Titanosaur.

"We think that it is [the biggest dinosaur]," said paleontologist Diego Pol, who was part of the team that unearthed the massive fossils, at a media preview of the new exhibit on Thursday. "The South American dinosaurs have achieved the largest sizes among all titanosaurs."

The cast of the skeleton measures 122 feet from head to tail, so long that it doesn't even fully fit into the fourth floor gallery where it will be permanently housed. Its neck and head extend out to the elevator banks, its tail is curled to save space, and its legs are bent slightly at the knee, in order to fit the animal under the snug 19-foot-high ceilings of its new home.

The individual fiberglass pieces of the skeleton were 3D-printed by Research Casting International in Trenton, Ontario, and were based on 84 real fossils excavated at the Patagonian site in 2014.

The titanosaur's real bones are far too heavy to mount as a complete display—plus this particular specimen was only 70 percent complete—but some of original fossils are mounted on an adjacent wall, and will remain at AMNH for the next year. The species is not yet named, but Pol said it will be officially christened soon, in an upcoming study about the discovery.

Needless to say, the whole thing makes for a breathtaking spectacle. With femurs the size of sofas and shoulder blades that look like truck beds, the titanosaur seems to strain both the laws of physics and evolution.

The sheer scope of this creature reminded me of the mania for dinosaur fossils exemplified by early 20th century circuses and museums slapped together by showmen like Barnum Brown. If only those Victorian museum-goers had known that when they awed over Brontosaurus displays, they were looking at only a mid-sized sauropod. The AMNH cast, in comparison, is 50 feet longer.

Oh, and did I mention that this titanosaur is a juvenile? It was still growing when it died and adults of its species are expected to have been even larger. Indeed, though this specimen is currently believed to be the largest dinosaur on record, paleontologists would not be surprised to find individuals in the future that are even larger.

"Every time we think we've found the biggest one, someone finds a bigger one," Mark Norell, an AMNH paleontologist and curator, told me at the preview. "We are getting close though, I think."

Along those lines, it seems that the last few years have been particularly fruitful in terms of titanosaur discoveries. Traditionally under-explored regions like South America have turned out to be goldmines when it comes to these large animals, which were an incredibly successful and worldly group of Goliaths during the Cretaceous.

"We think the titanosaurs originated in the southern continents, in Gondwanaland," Norell explained. "That's why we find them in India, in Australia, in Africa, South America, and Antarctica."

"The ones in the northern hemisphere—in Europe, North America and Central Asia—appear later than they first appear in Gondwanaland," he said. "So, we think they were Northern immigrants from the Southern continents."

Though they were a diverse and widely distributed group of dinosaurs, there came a day when the last members of this once great lineage were snuffed into extinction. Fortunately, they left a wealth of enormous bones behind for our random ape species to excavate, replicate, and marvel over some 66 million years later. So if you are in the New York area and would like to have your mind boggled, hit up the Titanosaur at AMNH, on display starting January 15.