Giant plant-eating Dinosaur found in Spain

Scientists have found the remains of one of the largest animals ever to walk on the Earth, a gargantuan plant-eating dinosaur near Riodeva, in Spain. It died about 150 million years ago, in the Late Jurassic Period.

From the bones found, it has been estimated that the dinosaur’s total body length could exceed that of a U.S. football field and it weighed between 40 and 48 tons, more than seven elephants.

The dinosaur has been named Turiasaurus riodevensis.

It's foreleg was comparable to an adult human and claws were almost the size of an American football. A skull, other bones and teeth were also located by the researchers. The research team found 70 pieces of the fossilized remains that represented about a quarter of its skeleton.

Its skeleton is the most complete of the super-giants, said Paul Upchurch at University College London, who participated in the study. That should help the scientists to learn more about how the long-necked sauropod got so big.

Initially dinosaurs of this scale have been found mostly in the Americas and Africa. It is the largest dinosaur to have ever been found in Europe.

"It's a tremendously large animal” said Thomas Holtz, a dinosaur expert at the University of Maryland.

This illustrates a previously unrecognized branch of European sauropod evolution, the scientists said. Sauropods are the largest land animals in Earth's history. However, relatively little is known about this group.

"This discovery is the dream of a paleontologist," said Luis Alcala of Fundacion Conjunto Paleontologico de Teruel-Dinopolis in Teruel, Spain. "Really, I'm not dreaming?"

Turiasaurus is believed to have eaten plants in an area close to the shoreline of the ancient Tethys Sea, forerunner of the Mediterranean Sea.