It was confirmed that it is a new species. Thailand's new giant dinosaur is characterized by a huge neck. It has been baptized as the nagatitan. And it is the largest dinosaur ever found in Southeast Asia. It weighed 27 tons—as much as nine adult Asian elephants—and was 27 meters long, longer than a diplodocus. Like that dinosaur, it belonged to the family of sauropods, long-necked herbivores.
A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Thailand identified the species. It was from fossils found next to a pond in northeastern Thailand a decade ago. Scientists say the find sheds light on how changes in ancient climate conditions allowed the development of gigantic dinosaurs.
Titan
The dinosaur's full name is Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis. "Naga" refers to a snake in Southeast Asian folklore. "Titan" refers to the gods of Greek mythology. AND chaiyaphumensis It means "from Chaiyaphum", the province where the fossils were discovered. This dinosaur lived between 100 million and 120 million years ago. They are about 40 million years earlier than Tyrannosaurus rex. It was about twice the size of that creature.
Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul is a doctoral student at University College London (UCL). He is the lead author of the study that was published in the journal Scientific Reports. He said researchers were referring to the nagatitan as Thailand's "last titan." The fossils were found in the country's most recent dinosaur-bearing rock formation. "Younger rocks, deposited towards the end of the age of dinosaurs, are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains. Because by then the region had become a shallow sea,” said the researcher.
"It may be the last or most recent large sauropod that we find in Southeast Asia," he added. The nagatitan is the fourteenth dinosaur to be named in Thailand. The country has a great diversity of dinosaur fossils. And it is "possibly the third most abundant in Asia in terms of dinosaur remains." Nagatitan inhabited Earth when the planet's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were rising, consistent with high global temperatures.
prolific area
Thailand's new giant dinosaur might not be the last. The sauropod family reached large sizes at that time. "It seems a little strange that sauropods could withstand higher temperature conditions," they note. Large bodies retain heat and are more difficult to cool. It is likely that the high temperatures had an impact on the vegetation that the sauropods fed on. They were large herbivores.
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