New Large Dino in Patagonia

L A   B U I T R E R A,   Argentina,   Jan. 25, 2001 -- Herdsman Raul Avelas was nonchalant when he spied huge bones on his patch of Argentina’s badlands a decade ago, seeing them as just another protrusion for his flock to stumble over en route to his adobe homestead.

“Since I started walking around the countryside here as a boy I’ve seen several bones, but I never gave it much importance,” Avelas said, adjusting his black beret and picking at his brown-stained teeth.

But Buenos Aires paleontologist Sebastian Apesteguia knew otherwise after chatting with Avelas a year ago. The fossils he and his seven-man team have since unearthed from a desolate, vulture-ridden cliff at La Buitrera (The Vulture Cage) in southern Argentina’s Patagonia are believed to be from the biggest dinosaur species ever discovered.

Huge Vertebrae

“There is nothing comparable to this so it is probably a new species,” the wiry Apesteguia said. The tip-off were the two cervical vertebrae each measuring 3.84 feet, the biggest ever unearthed.

“They were so big they seemed like a femur or tibia, but on closer examination they turned out to be neck vertebrae,” said Jorge Gonzalez, a technical artist from the Argentine Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires who is in on the dig.

With 10 to 12 vertebrae making up the neck, scientists envision a plant-eating sauropod stretching 154-160 feet from head to tail and towering 45 feet. That is roughly half a city block long and five stories high.

The closest rival is the Argentinosaurus discovered in the same region. It was the largest type of dinosaur ever found but the new find is 26 feet longer and sports the same body shape: small head, serpentine neck, barrel-shaped middle and a long tail. It weighed in at 88 tons or more.

Air Full of Spice

La Buitrera is about 50 miles as the buzzard flies from the town of Cipolletti in southern Rio Negro province. It is sparse land full by thorny scrub where the air smells like a rich combination of oregano and mint and temperatures regularly soar over 104 degrees.

The big-sky flatlands are inhabited by nandus (American ostriches), mountain goats and wild horses. It also contains mule skeletons picked bare by vultures and a cache of dinosaur bones rivaling those of China’s Gobi Desert and western Canada’s Alberta province.

“Rio Negro is very large and inhospitable and there’s a lot of bones here off the beaten track,” Apesteguia said.

Dagger-toothed Giganotosaurus, a bigger version of Tyrannosaurus Rex and the largest flesh-eater ever identified, was uncovered nearby in 1993, along with another carnivore still being studied that may be even bigger. Hundreds of dinosaur eggs were also found in an extinct volcano in 1998.

Magnetic Destination

“The lush vegetation brought the plant-eaters and they in turn attracted the meat-eaters,” said paleontologist Carlos Munoz, head of the Florentino Ameghino museum in Cipolletti.

In the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, La Buitrera was a forested plain dotted by lakes and sluiced by a huge river that probably flowed into the Pacific, unobstructed by the Andes mountain range, which had yet to be born. Bones of dinosaurs that died along the river were swept downstream and dumped on a bank that is now hard, brown sedimentary rock.

The fossils of what is believed to be the largest animal ever on Earth were found by Avelas on a ridge overlooking the canyon left by the river. The spot is perched atop the 128-foot walls of the gorge, which is too narrow in sections for access by vehicle or even horse.

Up to now the colossal dinosaur being unearthed there has simply been tagged the “Rio Negro Giant,” Munoz said.

Member of the Herd

Craning its long neck to eat fruits and leaves from the trees dotting the plain, the vegetarian beast probably ran in packs in the style of elephants, Gonzalez said.

Its awesome bulk offered it protection from marauding meat-eaters, whom it probably fended off with its enormous tail, he said. “Carnivores probably attacked the young, who were easier to topple.”

The “Rio Negro Giant” now consists of some 20 individual body parts including femurs, ribs and tail bones that lie strewn about the excavation site, patiently worked on eight hours a day with picks, brushes and plaster by the team of Argentine biologists, technicians and paleontology students.

Because of their lofty perch in the tight canyon and their combined weight exceeding 440 pounds, the specimens will most likely have to be flown out by helicopter to the Florentino Ameghino museum, Munoz said. “We’re going to try to get all the visible bones out of here by the end of January.”

More Digging Planned

The dinosaur diggers will then retire until school is out early in 2001, when the tap-tap of picks will echo through the canyon once again. Besides shards from the largest beast that ever roamed the planet, other pieces are expected to turn up.

“Here we’ve found crocodiles, sharks, birds, snakes, eggs, meat-eaters, plant-eaters, you name it. This place has got them all,” Munoz said.

Emphasizing the point, Apesteguia takes a small reddish-brown crocodile head fossil out of its protective newspaper like someone unwrapping a fragile crystal vase.

“There are dinosaurs everywhere,” he said. “The point is that here they are preserved.”