Our Largest Dinosaur Ever - Australotitan Cooperensis
Date of Record: 07/06/2021
The Eromanga Natural History Museum in Outback Queensland has announced they are home to Australia's largest ever dinosaur. Aptly named Australotitan cooperensis (nicknamed 'Cooper'), the Southern titan!
Cooper is as long as a basketball court and two storeys high and one of the biggest in the world.
Cooper is a new gigantic titanosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur group that represent the largest animals that walked on earth. It reached a similar size to the world's dinosaur giants found in South America, marking Australia's first entry into the world's dinosaur giants.
Cooper was unearthed by sheep and cattle grazers in West of Eromanga, South-west Queensland, in 2007.
The scientific publication marks a seventeen-year long journey by the Eromanga Natural History Museum director and palaeontologist Robyn Mackenzie, staff and Queensland Museum palaeontologists, fossil preparators, geologists, and countless volunteers.
It is believed Cooper lived during the Cretaceous Period, approximately 92-96 million years ago.
Determining the mass of Cooper was difficult, however, using the Titanosaur Mass estimator (Campione & Evans 2012) it is estimated it weighed as much as 67,000kg.
Thank you to photographer Steve young
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