The length of the dinosaur is about 31 meters and it weighs more than 80 tons
by the "Haaretz" service
The remains of a giant dinosaur, a species of the Titanosaurus, were discovered in the desert oasis of Hariya, Egypt. The dinosaur is about 31 meters long and weighs over 80 tons.
The dinosaur known as Paralatitan was a vegetarian and probably one of the largest animals that lived on Earth. It became extinct 94 million years ago. Its discovery confirms new research into a species of dinosaur known as the "Paradise Dinosaur".
Last year, a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania arrived in Bahria, led by PhD student Joshua Smith. The team members dug and studied the sands of the desert oasis in Bhariya, located southeast of Cairo, and found a number of fossils, including a 1.69 m long humerus. Based on the remains found, the team assembled a species of vegetarian dinosaur with a long neck and an unprecedentedly long tail.
The remains of the second largest steak in the world were discovered in the Sahara desert
This is what scientists call the dinosaur that weighed 60 tons, and is the second largest animal found so far; Lived 90 million years ago in the desert that was then a tropical paradise, and served as a huge meal for fearsome predators
Thursday, May 31, 2001, 17:16 pm
Animal remains found in the Sahara desert may be the remains of the second largest dinosaur to ever walk the earth, scientists in the United States say. According to their estimation, the animal that lived about 90 million years ago weighed 60 tons. The new discovery will be published in the magazine "Science".
The dinosaur was identified as a "sauropod", a type of vegetarian dinosaur. The team of researchers, led by Joshua b. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, decided to name it Paralitetitan Stromeri. The researchers discovered it near the desert oasis in Ahri in Egypt.
According to Smith, until now it was known that three types of carnivorous dinosaurs lived in Africa that lived about 95 years ago, but scientists struggled with the question of what their food was. "Now we have found the steak weighing 60 tons, which they used to eat," he said. According to the researchers, today's Sahara desert was at that time a tropical paradise for dinosaurs. Paradise was occasionally disturbed by the fearsome predators.
Only a few bones were found at the site, but they are sufficient to estimate the size of the animal. According to the researchers, the dinosaur reached a height of between 24 and 30 meters. The only dinosaur larger than it is the Argentinaosaurus, a sauropod discovered in South America and whose height is estimated at about 27 meters, and its weight is about 90 tons.
The second largest dinosaur in the world was discovered in Egypt
An American team has discovered a new species of vegetarian dinosaur
By John Noble Wilford, New York Times, and David Issachari
3 2001 June
Photo: Reuters: Prehalititan stromeri. It is 30-26 meters long and weighs about 70 tons
Paleontologists discovered in excavations in Egypt huge fossils of what appear to be the bones of the second largest dinosaur known to science. The length of the discovered dinosaur, known as Prehalititan Stromeri, ranges from 26 to 30 meters and weighs about 70 tons. In the news that appeared in the newspaper Science, the researchers claimed that the partial skeleton found represents a new species of titanosaurs - which are vegetarian dinosaurs with long necks and tails.
The meaning of the name "Perhalititan" is "tidal giant". The name reflects the desert oasis in Hariya where the dinosaur lived; The name "Strömer" was given to the dinosaur after Dr. Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach, a geologist and paleontologist.
from the University of Munich. Stromer revealed his findings before the First World War. The excavation site where he worked attracted paleontologists at the time, but like most sites in North Africa, it was abandoned at the end of World War II - after Stromer's collection of Egyptian fossils was bombed by the Allies.
The new findings were discovered last year by an American team led by student Joshua Smith, from the University of Pennsylvania. At the end of an evening of drinking beer, Smith and his friends talked about the places they would like to go to solve scientific mysteries. Finally they decided to investigate "Stromer's lost dinosaurs", in Egypt.
Smith says that in 1999, while he was working on a large expedition exploring Bahria (about 320 km southwest of Cairo), he received permission to spend a few days looking for dinosaur fossils. Already on their first day, Smith and his colleagues encountered an exciting discovery. This is the bone of the upper arm of the dinosaur that was discovered in the excavations. The size of the bone testified to the enormous size of the entire animal. The length of the bone reached almost two meters - 14% longer than that of the largest dinosaur known to science that lived in the same geological period (the Cretaceous period).
Based on this finding, the team of researchers estimated that Stromeri Perhalititan may be second in size only to the South American dinosaur, the Titanosaurus Argentinosaurus, which is considered the largest land animal to have walked the earth. Argentinosaurus was no longer than Perhalititan Stromeri, but it was 30 tons heavier than it.
According to the researchers, they found other fossils that probably belonged to some of the dinosaur species that Dr. Stromer discovered at the time. They also uncovered fossils of fish, crabs and crocodile species. Near the remains of the Stromeri Prehalititan was a large tooth of another dinosaur, apparently a meat eater that was looking for food in the dinosaur's carcass. Both finds are 94 million years old. The desert oasis in Bhariya is in the same area where Egyptian archaeologists recently found a large cemetery of mummies decorated with gold.
It is likely that the discovery by Smith and his colleagues will lead to the revival of the search for fossils in an area that was already abandoned in the past, and which, according to the scientists, was probably a "paradise for dinosaurs". There, hundreds of giant reptiles lived in a swampy landscape more than 90 million years ago.
David Issachari, Director of the Science Forum at IOL adds: According to Joshua B Smith's article in the Science newspaper, it is hoped that this find and others from its selection will help solve a number of questions about this mysterious and important period in terms of the development of mammals. Similar groups of mammals were found in South America and Madagascar in the Late Cretaceous, but representatives of these groups are absent in Africa. The paleontologists speculate that the reason is that Madagascar and South America were connected at the same time, and of course disconnected from Africa. The authors of the last article, on the other hand, claim that this situation is accidental and simply stems from a lack of research works in Africa.
The analysis of the findings from the found skeleton convinced the researchers that it is a new type of titanosaurid, a group of long-necked, long-tailed, plant-eating dinosaurs that were among the largest that lived on earth. The length of his upper arm bone is 1.69 meters and indicates his estimated size of about 35-30 meters and a weight of about 75-80 tons.
Smith and his team discovered the skeletal parts in sediments preserved in plant sediments that indicate the existence of a shallow and intrusive coastal area with mangrove forests like in Florida. The creature was buried in its entirety, since the remaining bones were found connected, but there are signs of predation by another dinosaur.
This site also found some fossils considered to be missing from Stromer's list, as well as many fossils of fish, crabs, octopuses and crocodile-like fossils, some of which are giants in their own right. This situation caused the authors of the article to speculate about the unique features of this site. They attribute this situation to the existence of a super-predator the size of Tyrannosaurus T, famous for the large amounts of biomass in the ecological conditions, the biomass, of this area, which are compared to the tropical rain forest of today. That's why they call this area a "paradise for dinosaurs".
The research on this fruitful site, also for ontologists, will continue. We await further findings.
Photo: IP
A researcher from Philadelphia University presents the dinosaur's humerus. Unprecedented size
