Fossils of Biggest Dinosaur Found to Date in Thailand Reported
Everything Dinosaur has received reports that news sources are stating that fossils of a very big dinosaur, a sauropod, have been found in Thailand. The first dinosaur bone from Thailand was discovered back in 1976, since then, as the country’s geology has been mapped and explored, a number of exciting dinosaur fossil discoveries have been made, mostly by employees of the Department for Mineral Resources, which is part of the Ministry for Natural Resources and the Environment.
Thailand’s Biggest Dinosaur Discovery
Thailand has quite extensive Mesozoic-aged exposures from both marine and non-marine environments. To date, team members think that the largest dinosaur known from Thailand would be Phuwiangosaurus (P. sirindhornae), which is estimated to have reached a length of about twenty metres and weighed as much as seventeen tonnes.
The First Every Dinosaur Fossil from Thailand
The distal end of a sauropod femur.
Picture credit: Department of Mineral Resources (Thailand)
The photograph above shows the first dinosaur fossil to have come to the attention of science found in Thailand. The distal end (the part furthest away from the body) of a femur was found eroding out of a stream bed in 1976. Since then, a number of dinosaur genera have been named and described including an iguanodont (Sirindhorna khoratensis) and two sizeable theropods (Siamotyrannus isanensis and Siamosaurus suteethorni).
A senior government official (Niwat Maneekut, deputy director-general of the Department of Mineral Resources), is reported to have said that the fossils come from the north-east of the country. A single fossilised bone was found by a villager in the Nong Bua Raheo district of Chaiyaphum province, around two hundred miles north-east of the capital Bangkok, last year, but more recent excavations led by palaeontologists from the Department of Mineral Resources had recovered a further twenty pieces of bone.
Information remains patchy, but the fossils are estimated to be around 100 million years old and scientists are conducting more research.
Phuwiangosaurus is Believed to be a Member of the Euhelopodidae and Therefore Similar to Euhelopus
Euhelopus scale drawing. Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur
For models of sauropods and other dinosaurs: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models.
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