40 Fun Facts About Argentinosaurus

What did farmer Guillermo Heredia think he had found when he uncovered the first Argentinosaurus bone on his land?

A petrified log was Heredia's first guess, so he reported the find to the local museum. Its staff dug out a leg bone about 1.55 metres long.

Which living animal is far heavier than even Argentinosaurus ever was?

Blue whale adults can weigh more than 150 tonnes, so even this giant of the land was far lighter than a creature alive today.

Despite its record-breaking adult size, a newly hatched Argentinosaurus probably weighed no more than what?

About 5 kg is the most a hatchling is thought to have weighed. Giants like this multiplied their size around 100,000 times as they grew, more than any other amniote.

A 2013 computer simulation of a walking Argentinosaurus put the giant dinosaur's top speed at roughly what?

About 5 mph was the model's limit, just over two metres per second. The virtual skeleton learned to walk through machine learning that searched for the least tiring movements.

Argentinosaurus belonged to which major dinosaur group, known for long necks, long tails and four pillar-like legs?

Sauropods include the longest and heaviest dinosaurs ever found. Argentinosaurus sat in a late branch called the titanosaurs, the last of the group to die out.

The 'saurus' ending of the name Argentinosaurus comes from an ancient word for which kind of animal?

Lizard is the meaning of the ending, so the full name reads as Argentine lizard. Its namers chose it in 1993 to honour the country where the bones were found.

Argentinosaurus fossils come from which region of Argentina, famous for its giant dinosaurs?

Patagonia has produced several of the biggest dinosaurs ever found, plant-eaters and predators alike. Argentinosaurus came from sandstone in the north of the region.

Argentinosaurus lived during which geological period, the last chapter of the age of dinosaurs?

Cretaceous rocks hold every known Argentinosaurus bone. By then flowering plants had appeared, and their pollen turns up in the same rock formation as the giant.

Film crews recreating the world of Argentinosaurus for the BBC special Land of Giants had to avoid which plant?

Grass was off limits because the producers wanted a landscape from before it had evolved. They filmed on lava slopes in Tenerife and on Australia's Fraser Island.

What filled the honeycomb of chambers inside the huge back bones of Argentinosaurus and its giant relatives?

Air filled the many small chambers, a weight-saving design most developed in the largest long-necked dinosaurs. One single back bone stood about 1.59 metres tall.

Roughly how long was Argentinosaurus from snout to tail tip, according to most modern estimates?

About 35 metres is the usual figure, though some reconstructions stop at 30. With no neck or tail bones found, the length is scaled up from smaller relatives.

Modern estimates put the body weight of a full-grown Argentinosaurus at roughly what figure?

About 70 tonnes sits in the middle of the usual range, which runs from 65 to 80. That is the heaviest figure for any land animal known from good fossil material.

Which giant meat-eater, found as at least seven individuals in one bonebed, may have hunted Argentinosaurus in packs?

Mapusaurus shared the same rock formation as Argentinosaurus and grew to ten metres or more. Whether the group hunted as an organised pack or simply mobbed its prey is unknown.

In the BBC special Land of Giants, which huge predator does the presenter watch hunting Argentinosaurus?

Giganotosaurus is the hunter the time-travelling zoologist tracks down. Its real bones come from an older rock layer, lying just beneath the one that holds Argentinosaurus.

Which wildlife presenter played the time-travelling zoologist who tracks Argentinosaurus in Land of Giants?

Nigel Marven was added so viewers could judge the animals' scale against a person. The role earned him a Royal Television Society nomination for best factual presenter.

Which fossil assigned to Argentinosaurus is more than eight feet long, with a shaft over a yard around?

A thigh bone credited to the giant is 2.5 metres long and more than a metre around. Experts still debate whether it truly belongs to Argentinosaurus.

Dreadnoughtus, a giant often compared with Argentinosaurus, was named after an early twentieth-century type of what?

Battleship fits a name meaning 'fears nothing'. Its discoverer wanted plant-eaters to get their due as the toughest creatures in their environment.

Titanosaurs, the group that includes Argentinosaurus, take their name from giants of which ancient mythology?

Greek myth supplied the Titans, by way of a dinosaur called Titanosaurus. The group was so widespread that its fossils turn up on every continent, Antarctica included.

To eat fast enough, what did giants like Argentinosaurus do with each mouthful?

Swallowed it without chewing, so each mouthful went down quickly and was broken down during a long stay in the gut. A long neck let the animal reach more food without moving.

Argentinosaurus sits at the heavy end of the dinosaur size range; which living bird sits at the lightest?

Bee hummingbird adults weigh only two or three grams, and birds count as living dinosaurs. The Cuban species is the smallest bird alive, and so the smallest known dinosaur.

Which fossil hunter, dubbed the 'Master of the Mesozoic', led the 1989 dig and co-named Argentinosaurus?

José Bonaparte had no formal training in palaeontology, yet he described more than twenty prehistoric animals. He was the son of an Italian sailor, with no close link to Napoleon's family.

The palaeontologist who led the Argentinosaurus dig also named which predator with two horns above its eyes?

Carnotaurus means 'meat-eating bull', a nod to its bull-like horns. Its only skeleton was dug up in 1984 by the same expedition leader.

Which US city's Fernbank Museum displays a 123-foot Argentinosaurus skeleton in its atrium?

Atlanta is home to Giants of the Mesozoic, where the mounted giant is posed with a huge predator in a glass-walled atrium overlooking old-growth forest.

The rock encasing the first Argentinosaurus skeleton was so hard that excavators had to use which tools?

Pneumatic hammers freed the remains, which included seven back vertebrae and part of the hips. All of them came from a single animal and went to the town museum.

The species name of Argentinosaurus honours which desert oil town close to the farm where it was found?

Plaza Huincul gave Argentinosaurus huinculensis its second name, and its museum keeps the original bones. The town grew up after oil was struck there in 1918.

Which whip-tailed North American dinosaur may have been even longer than Argentinosaurus while weighing far less?

Supersaurus belonged to the slender diplodocid family, whose whip-like tails added length without much weight. Some estimates stretch it to 39 metres.

Bruhathkayosaurus, a mysterious giant that may have outweighed Argentinosaurus, was dug up in which country?

India's monsoon-soaked site left the bones so crumbly that they began falling apart in transit and no longer exist. Only old photographs and descriptions remain, so its true size is disputed.

A vast fossil site in the same province as Argentinosaurus is famous for which titanosaur remains?

Eggs with embryos fill the vast nesting ground at Auca Mahuevo, the remains of a titanosaur hatchery. Its discoverers were looking for fossil birds when they found it in 1997.

In the age of Argentinosaurus, its home continent was pulling away from which southern supercontinent?

Gondwana's break-up left southern dinosaurs to evolve apart from northern ones. That isolation is why Argentine fossils looked so strange to scientists used to northern species.

Saltasaurus, a smaller cousin of Argentinosaurus, surprised scientists as the first of its kind found with what?

Bony armour, in the form of small plates set in the skin, turned up with the skeleton. Earlier finds of such plates had been credited to a different kind of dinosaur entirely.

Estimates for Argentinosaurus are uncertain because how much of its skeleton has ever been found?

Only a few bones are known: some vertebrae, part of the hips, a rib and a lower leg bone. Its neck and tail have never turned up, so its shape is borrowed from relatives.

Which size rival of Argentinosaurus has a polar-sounding name despite being discovered in Argentina?

Antarctosaurus was named for the southern continent it came from, not for Antarctica. Its biggest species is so poorly known that experts doubt it belongs in the genus.

The Argentinosaurus special Land of Giants belongs to which landmark BBC documentary franchise?

Walking with Dinosaurs returned with two specials that put a human presenter beside the animals for the first time. Together they won an Emmy for animation.

Magyarosaurus, a dwarf cousin of Argentinosaurus, is thought to have stayed small because it lived where?

On islands, limited food favoured smaller bodies, a pattern called insular dwarfism. Europe was then a scatter of islands, and adults weighed under a tonne.

Maraapunisaurus may have been even bigger than Argentinosaurus, so why can nobody check the claim today?

Its bones were lost at some point after being described in the 1870s, leaving only a drawing and field notes. The fragile fossil may simply have crumbled and been thrown away.

Paralititan, a 'tidal giant' sometimes compared with Argentinosaurus, was unearthed at an oasis in which country?

Egypt's Bahariya Oasis was a coastal mangrove swamp when the animal lived there. It was the first dinosaur shown to have inhabited such a habitat.

Which actor narrated Planet Dinosaur, the BBC series that shows Argentinosaurus hatchlings emerging at a nest site?

John Hurt voiced all six episodes. In one, a newly hatched Argentinosaurus is killed by a predator, which flees when a herd of adults arrives.

The 2013 simulation found Argentinosaurus walked most efficiently by swinging which legs together?

Same-side pair movement, with fore and hind limb swinging together, is a gait called a pace. The digital giant settled on it because it used the least energy.

Argentinosaurus was unearthed in which Argentine province, home of the Vaca Muerta shale oil field?

Neuquén has yielded both the giant plant-eater and some of the largest predators known. The first bone lay on a farm about eight kilometres from the nearest town.

Researchers at which English university made a digital Argentinosaurus take its first steps in 2013?

Manchester's team needed the power of about 30,000 desktop computers to run the model. They hoped the work would also help engineers build better walking robots.