Portugal: The remains of, what is being claimed to be the largest ever Dinosaur in Europe have been found in the backyard of a Portuguese man. The skeleton is known to have been discovered in the central city of Pombal back in 2017 as the man began building his house and had discovered some fragments of a fossiled bone. It has now been excavated by Spanish and Portuguese palaeontologists in August.
As per the palaeontologists, the remains seem to be the fossilised skeleton of a ‘Sauropod’. The Sauropod were herbivorous, four–legged creatures with long necks and tails. They were the biggest of all the dinosaurs and the largest land animals that have ever lived. They are believed to have existed in the Upper Jurassic Period, i.e. approximately 150 million years ago.
In the recent excavation, the palaeontologists unearthed the parts of the spine and ribs of the dinosaur. The reports suggest that the huge dinosaur reptile was about 12 meters (39 feet) tall and 25 meters (82 feet) long.Â
Elisabete Malafaia, a researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, stated , “It is not so common to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position.
Such kind of preservation of the fossil records of dinosaurs, Sauropods particularly, is quite a rare feat from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic, she further stated. Moreover, discovering the fossil in such a state has made the researchers to believe that there’s a lot left to unearth further for research purposes.
The skeleton is currently being examined by international research teams.
