Imagine what it’s like to find Europe’s largest dinosaur buried in your backyard?! Well, that’s what happened to this family!
This giant dinosaur skeleton was discovered in a garden in Pompal, Portugal in 2017 by a man doing construction work on his house
Fast-forward to 2022, a team of paleontologists from Portugal and Spain have begun unearthing dinosaur fossils, which they believe are sauropods.
Sauropods are the largest creatures that have ever roamed the Earth They lived about 150 million years ago and had long necks and long tails, and lived on a plant-based diet. Looking at the size of the dinosaur’s ribs and spine, paleontologists believe the dinosaur was probably about 12 meters tall and 25 meters long – that’s more than two double-decker buses!
Elisabette Malafaia, a researcher at the University of Lisbon’s Faculty of Science, told Phys.org:
“It’s not normal to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position keeping the original anatomical position.”
The skeleton is currently being studied by an international team of researchers, and paleontologists hope to find more skeletons as they continue to dig.