Scientists: We've found the biggest dinosaur ever

Even by dinosaur standards, a new one unearthed in Argentina is big. In fact, the paleontologists who found it say it's the biggest ever found and thus the biggest creature ever to have walked the earth, reports the BBC^[1].

Let us count the ways: Based on its ginormous thigh bones, they estimate that it was 65 feet tall, 130 feet long, and weighed about 85 tons, reports the Telegraph^[2]. That would make it about 8 tons heavier than the previous No. 1, Argentinosaurus, though at least one expert cautions that a lot of guesswork goes into such claims.

"It's like two trucks with a trailer each, one in front of the other, and the weight of 14 elephants together," says the lead Argentinian paleontologist on the dig, as quoted in the Guardian^[3]. "This is a real paleontological treasure."

The creature, which doesn't have a name yet, is thought to be a new species of titanosaur within the larger sauropod group. The herbivore roamed the Patagonia region of Argentina about 100 million years ago.

A dinosaur expert at London's Natural History Museum notes that estimating size from bones is a tricky thing, and "ideally we'd need much more material of these supersized animals to determine just how big they really got."

(There is also a newly found dinosaur dubbed "Pinocchio Rex^[4].")

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