Argentinosaurus, the giant known from broken bones

When and where

Argentinosaurus lived about 96 to 92 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous. Its fossils come from Argentina, in South America, when the southern continents still carried their own lineages of huge sauropods. This was not a swamp monster dragging itself through mud. It was a land animal with column-like legs, a long neck, and a body plan built for feeding high and moving slowly across open ground.

How we know

The first Argentinosaurus fossils came from Neuquén Province in Argentina and were described in 1993 by José Bonaparte and Rodolfo Coria. The known material is frustratingly incomplete: vertebrae, ribs, and limb elements rather than a full skeleton. Even so, the bones are enormous enough to place it among the largest dinosaurs yet named. Size estimates usually put it around 30 to 35 metres long and roughly 65 to 80 tonnes, though those numbers depend on comparisons with better-known titanosaurs. Source: Wikipedia.

What set it apart

Argentinosaurus belonged to Titanosauria, the sauropod group that became especially common during the Cretaceous. Titanosaurs kept the classic long-necked shape but often had wider bodies and tougher-looking vertebrae than earlier Jurassic sauropods. The striking thing about Argentinosaurus is scale. A single back vertebra could be taller than a person. Its neck probably let it strip leaves across a broad feeding zone without moving its heavy body every few seconds. It was not alone in the giant-size race; Patagotitan and Puertasaurus make the same conversation messy. Still, Argentinosaurus remains one of the names people reach for when they want to picture the upper limit of land-animal size.

For collectors and classrooms

A good Argentinosaurus model gives students a simple way to compare dinosaur shapes: small head, long neck, huge torso, pillar legs. It also opens a useful question for classrooms: how do palaeontologists estimate a whole animal from only part of a skeleton? If you are building a sauropod shelf or lesson box, start with the reserved pick here: Argentinosaurus figurine.