The skeleton of an 82ft-long dinosaur has been discovered in a man’s backyard in central Portugal.
The site in the city of Pombal is being studied by palaeontologists from Portugal and Spain, and they think they may have discovered the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur yet discovered in Europe.
The plant-eating, four-legged dinosaurs known as Sauropods are distinguished by their long necks and tails.
After discovering bone parts on his property in 2017 while conducting construction, the proprietor started an excavation.
According to scientists, they recently discovered the bones and ribs of a potential brachiosaurid sauropod, or brachiosaurus, which would have stood around 39 feet (12 metres) tall and been about 82 feet (25 metres) long.
The Brachiosauridae group is made up of large species that lived from the Upper Jurassic period to the Lower Cretaceous, around 160 to 100 million years ago.
“It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position,” Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, said.
“This mode of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, in particular sauropods, from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic.”
