Australotitan, Australia's Largest Dinosaur

[Dynomikegojira]

I bring another new exciting discovery in Australotitan cooperensis, a recently discovered titanosaur of the Winton Formation that may be the largest Australian dinosaur known.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/phys.org/news/2021-06-australia-largest-dinosaur-australotitan-southern.amp

[Bread]

Awesome, and I want to say this genus was discovered back in 2007, and has just recently been described. Not to go off topic, but why such the long gap for it to now finally grab some attention?

[Dynomikegojira]

Not sure honestly, it seems that it takes years so some animals to finally be described, I still remember Daspletosaurus Horneri.

[Newt]

Cool! Here's the (open access) paper: https://peerj.com/articles/11317/


@Bread - Excavation and preparation of fossils, research, and publication all take time and money, and besides that, there is a limited number of workers compared to the number of potential research projects. It's not a given that a researcher is available to start work on a new find the moment it's discovered, or even if they are, that they can quickly wrest funding from a granting body. I know it's frustrating for us armchair palaeontologists, but do give some consideration to the practical realities of research. Besides, patience is a virtue!

[Dynomikegojira]

Yeah and they also found more remains in 2021 according to the article so that may have had something to do with it as well.

Thanks Newt I definitely got to read that.

[ITdactyl]

Vlad Konstantinov providing the awesome press release art.



Slightly off topic, but does anyone know what prompted this current trend of restoration for Titanosaur faces? It's almost vaguely bird like. Wouldn't the soft tissue extend further forward so that the nares are closer to the tip of the jaw? *edit* forget that, 'just saw the close up of the face of the 3d model. They reconstructed the front of the jaw as having the sauropod pseudo-"beak". Totally forgot about that discovery.