70 million-year-old dinosaur skeleton discovered by a man walking his dog

A man who took his dog out for a walk in France two years ago made an astounding discovery -- one that he's been keeping a secret, until now.

In 2022, Damien Boschetto stumbled upon a massive, 70 million-year-old fossil that turned out to be a nearly complete skeleton of a long-necked titanosaur, he told ABC News.

Boschetto, now 25 years old, said the unexpected discovery was made in the forests of Montouliers, near his home in Cruzy, a village in southern France.

"The territory around Cruzy is rich in fossils of dinosaurs and other species living at the same time," Boschetto told ABC News in a translated statement. "For 28 years, Cruzy has been supplying and building one of the largest collections of dinosaur fossils from the Upper Cretaceous period in France."

Titanosaurs, members of the sauropod dinosaur family, roamed the Earth from the Late Jurassic Epoch -- 163.5 million to 145 million years ago -- to the end of the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 145 million to 66 million years ago, according to Britannica.

The long-necked dinosaurs are the largest terrestrial animals known, Britannica reports, adding that some titanosaurs grew to the size of modern whales. Their fossils, which include 40 different species, have been found on all continents except Antarctica, according to Britannica.

Boschetto -- who has a "self-taught passion" for paleontology -- discovered the exposed bone fossils, which led to the excavation of a 70% complete, 30-foot-long fossilized titanosaur.

"It happened one morning like any other, during an ordinary walk," Boschetto told local FranceBleu in February. "While walking the dog, a landslide on the edge of the cliff exposed the bones of various skeletons."

"They were fallen bones, therefore isolated. We realized after a few days of excavations that they were connected bones," Boschetto said.

Boschetto, along with members of the Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association (ACAP) at the Cruzy Museum, kept the findings secret in order to protect the paleontological site while they excavated the massive skeleton.

"During the extraction, we [were] in sandstone. It is an extremely hard sediment," Boschetto said, adding that he and the ACAP members were worried the site "would be pillaged, damaged by people who do not know."

Boschetto hopes that people visit the Cruzy Museum to see the titanosaur skeleton, now that the fossil has been excavated and protected for study. "It is a flagship piece for the general public, to be able to admire a dinosaur in anatomical connection like that," he said.

Since his discovery two years ago, Boschetto said he's left his job in the energy sector and now hopes to pursue a master's degree in paleontology to continue his work in Cruzy.

Francis Fage, founder of the Cruzy Museum, told FranceBleu that Boschetto's exceptional discovery proves he has an "eye" for dinosaur research.

"It is very rare to find this, he had to have the eye," Fage said of Damien. "There are some who have passed for 30 years and they have not seen this site."