VIDEO: Titanosaur could be biggest dinosaur yet

Scientists in Argentina have uncovered what could be the largest dinosaur yet found — a long-necked titanosaur as tall as a six-storey building, whose thigh bone alone dwarfs grown men.

It will take years of work for researchers to uncover the entire skeleton, and they will need a new museum once they put it together. Paleontologists say the titanosaur could have stretched 20m tall and 40m long, weighing the equivalent of 14 or 15 adult African elephants.

“Given the length and magnitude this animal will bring along when it’s reconstructed, there won’t be a building that can contain it. I think we’re going to need a new home,” said Ruben Cuneo, who directs the Egidio Feruglio dinosaur museum in the Patagonian city of Trelew, southern Argentina, which is sponsoring the dig.

Sauropods were long-necked, whip-tailed plant-eaters that roamed the Earth more than 90m years ago. Other experts agree this find is a previously undiscovered species and that it was at least as big as the argentinosaurus, which had been thought to set the record for size.

What is known about argentinosaurus anatomy is mostly based on an incomplete thigh bone found in 1991, also in Argentina’s fossil-rich Patagonia region. This time, paleontologists think they will be able to unearth a much more complete fossil.

Already, the complete thigh bone they have uncovered is, at 2.4m, the longest of any vertebrate yet found, said paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido, who is leading the research team. A volumetric estimate based on the femur and humerus uncovered suggests the animal weighed around 80,000kg.

“Based on what is known of the animal, it was certainly very, large,” said paleontologist John Whitlock of Mount Aloysius College, Pennsylvania.

“Just how large may have to wait for more fossils and will probably depend on the method used to estimate its total size — we’ve seen how much estimates of mass can change for fragmentary animals like argentinosaurus — but right now it would certainly seem to be a strong contender for largest known sauropod,” Whitlock said.

The bones were spotted years ago by a worker at a ranch outside the town of Las Plumas in Patagonia’s Rio Chubut valley, and Carballido’s team from the museum began digging in January 2013.

“What they discovered is a cemetery of dinosaurs the likes of which we had never seen in the history of Argentine paleontology,” Cuneo said.

Along with the titanosaur, they have found the fossils of seven other dinosaurs, and have only uncovered an estimated 20% of the find.