Kathmandu, June 8.  Palaeontologists have recently discovered skeletal remains of a new species of dinosaur in Australia.

In the research article published in the PeerJ life and environment Journal, the scientists have described that the skeletal remains belonged to Australia’s largest dinosaur. The species is estimated to have reached a height of 5-6.5 metres at the hip and 25-30 metres in length.

The species is tagged as “Australotitan cooperensis” as it was first discovered in 2006 in a cattle farming property near Cooper Creek of Queensland.

After nearly 17 years of extensive digital analysis of the bones, the scientists came to a conclusion that the new species was a plant-eating sauropod that lived between 92 million and 96 million years ago. It was during the Cretaceous Period when Antarctica and Australia were attached together.

The research was collectively conducted by Eromanga Natural History Museum and the Queensland Museum. Curator and the co-author of the paper, Palaeontologist Scott Hocknull said that their ultimate goal is to find the evidence that tells the grand changing story of Queensland that started hundreds of million years ago.

Click here to read the detailed research article entitled “A new giant sauropod, Australotitan cooperensis gen. et sp. nov., from the mid-Cretaceous of Australia” published in the PeerJ life and environment Journal on June 7, 2021.