He’s very old, a vegetarian and weighs almost 60,000 kg — the weight of a dozen African elephants put together! That’s Dreadnoughtus for you — the largest creature to ever walk the earth. This plant-eating dinosaur belonging to a group called Titanosaurs , lived approximately 77 million years ago. It was discovered in 2006 by Kenneth Lacovara, an associate professor in Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and a team of researchers and students at Southern Patagonia in Argentina.
Biggest ever
Dreadnoughtus — meaning ‘Fear Nothing’ — was named after a last century battleship because, “I think it’s finally time that herbivores get their due,” says Professor Lacovara in a video uploaded by Drexel University.
It was announced to the world in September 2014. Dreadnoughtus was 85 feet (26 m) long and weighed about 65 tons (59,300 kg) making it the largest land animal ever found. This discovery is especially interesting because scientists were able to find over 70 per cent of its bones and it’s the most complete skeleton of its type ever found. This finding will “help understand the frontier of physiology in terms of super massive land animals” says Prof Lacovara, who hopes to get better insight into the anatomy and biomechanics of large animals.
In India
When dinosaur remains were first discovered in India, they hadn’t even been zoologically defined. William Henry Sleeman who was the captain of Jubbulpore District in British India is credited with having discovered dinosaur remains in India in 1828, which is also Asia’s first. While on one of his morning walks, Sleeman discovered a fossil in the Nerbudda valley, which he later sent to London to be analysed. Following this discovery, there was a flurry of activity by British naturalists followed by a lull. Interestingly, Indian dinosaurs are closely related to the ones in Madagascar and South America and not those in South-East Asia. This is because of the continental drift phenomenon and serves as a proof of it. Before the continents started to break away from the Gondwana super continent, India and Madagascar were one.
Extinction
There are two theories as to why dinosaurs became extinct. The first is a gigantic Deccan volcanic eruption and the second is an asteroid crashing into earth. The causes are different but the eventualities are the same — the release of a lot of gases that enveloped the earth blocking sunlight. Without sunlight the plants died in six weeks, causing a collapse of the food chain. In that catastrophe 65 per cent of the word’s species, including the dinosaurs were wiped out. We are the likely descendants of the remaining 35 per cent!
Remarkable features
The neck was 37 feet long.
The femur, the thigh bone, is over six feet long.
The humerus, the upper arm bone, is almost as tall as an average human being.
The tailbones are gargantuan with huge muscle scars that show that it essentially had a weaponised tail that was 30 feet long.
The chevron bones — the tail-wagging bones — stay big and are present right most of the way down the tail.
These big animals have all kinds of evolutionary adaptations for saving weight. Their neck vertebrae have lots of air cavities inside it.
You can’t afford to have big weight at the end of a 37-foot lever. So even though this animal is as big as a house, its head would be only as big as a horse’s head.
(Source: Drexel University News Blog)
Expert speaks
Ashok Sahni, retired professor of Geology from Punjab University and the winner of the Lifetime Achievement National Geoscience Award from the Government of India, speaks about the importance of studying about our pre-historic ancestors and their Indian cousins.
Significance of the discovery
Dinosaurs have always captured our imagination mainly because of their out-of-the-world appearance and their variety — carnivores, herbivores, flying and so on. They are unique because they existed on earth for a longer time than any other species. While the period they thrived on earth spans 165 million years, we humans have been around for only four million. While their size makes for a mind-boggling study of scale and skeletal architecture, the way they died, along with other species around them, sure makes for a good story.
