A team of Argentine paleontologists excavating in Patagonia found the remains of the largest dinosaur on record belonging to the raptor family.
Mauro Aranciaga Rolando, one of the scientists involved in the discovery, said the dinosaur was a new species called Maip macrothorax, with a body length of between 9 and 10 meters, while other "giant birds of prey" were no more than 9 meters.
"The size of this animal is so large that we were able to find a lot of remains," Aranciaga Rolando told Reuters on Wednesday when the fossils were on display at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Argentine Museum in the capital Buenos Aires.
The National Council for Scientific and Technological Research, to which the experts who found the dinosaurs, said the fossils were found in The Province of Santa Cruz in Patagonia in March 2019, days before strict COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were imposed.
Two Japanese scientists also took part in the expedition to Argentina.
Due to the pandemic, paleontologists initially had to distribute fossils between them and analyze them at home.
Carnivorous dinosaurs are thought to have inhabited the southern tip of present-day Argentina during the Cretaceous period 70 million years ago.
Aranciaga Rolando said that the great raptor was a skeletal agile animal with a long tail that allowed them to maneuver and balance, a long neck and slender skull, with more than 60 small teeth, he explained that the sharp limbs of the "Maip" were the animal's most dangerous weapons.