Fossil studies confirm new dinosaur species in Australia

Beijing, June 14 (Xinhua) -- An international team of scientific researchers recently reported that the giant dinosaur fossils previously found in Australia come from a new dinosaur species, which is also the largest type of dinosaur found on Australian land to date. The paper was recently published in the U.S. Journal of Peer-Reviewed Science.

The paper speculates that the height of the hips of this dinosaur when it stood alive was about 5 meters to 6.5 meters, and its length from the mouth and nose to the end of the tail could reach 25 meters to 30 meters.

Fossilized skeletons of the giant dinosaur were first discovered in 2004 in the southwestern Queensland town of Iromanga. Because the discovery was near Cooper Creek, the researchers gave it a nickname at the time , " Cooperosaurus " , and continued to analyze fossil fragments of " Cooperosaurus " for more than 10 years.

Scott Hocknall, a queensland museum researcher and lead author of the paper, said: "To confirm that 'Cooperosaurus' is a new breed, we need to compare its skeleton with the skeletons of other dinosaurs found in Queensland and around the world. This is an extremely long and arduous task. ”

The researchers used three-dimensional scanning technology to digitally scan each bone and compare it with other dinosaur bones and found that "Cooperosaurus" was a new dinosaur species, belonging to the sauropod dinosaurs, living in the middle of the Cretaceous Period, and officially named it "Southern TitanOsaurus".

Hockener said the dinosaur belonged to the same "family" as the three dinosaurs previously found in Australia — "WintonOsaurus," "Diamantina, and Prairie Dragon," and Cooperosaurus was the largest of them.