The skeleton of a large dinosaur has been discovered on a man’s lawn in Pombal, Portugal, and may be the largest ever discovered in Europe, according to a press release issued Wednesday.
The owner saw fragments of fossilized bones in the paintings of his backyard structure in 2017 and contacted a study team, which initiated an initial excavation crusade the same year, according to the statement.
Earlier this month, Spanish and Portuguese paleontologists worked at the site for more than a week and unearthed the remains of the largest sauropod dinosaur ever discovered on the continent, according to the statement. Sauropods are four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs with a long neck and tail. This dinosaur was about 39 feet tall and 82 feet long.
“It is not the same to locate all the ribs of such an animal, let alone in this position, maintaining its original anatomical position. This mode of conservation is rare in the fossil record of dinosaurs, especially sauropods, from Upper Portugal. Jurassic,” Dr. Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon, said in a statement.
“This type of preservation is relatively rare for giant dinosaurs in the Portuguese fossil record and indicates specific, environmental and taphonomic characteristics,” he told CBS News on Thursday.
The maximum vital elements of the skeleton were collected at the site, which includes the vertebrae and ribs of an imaginable brachiosaurid sauropod, or brachiosaurus, according to the news release. Dinosaur species roamed the Earth 160 to 100 million years ago.
Malafaia told CBS News that the shorelines are about 3 meters, only about 10 feet long, which she says are “the largest ribs of a sauropod known lately in Europe and one of the largest described in the world. “
Due to the dinosaur’s conservation characteristics, researchers believe that other parts of its skeleton will also be discovered nearby. Malafaia said they plan to return next year.
The Pombal region has been fruitful in terms of fossil sites, he said, noting that the region has “abundant fossil records of dinosaurs and vertebrates. “
“This fossil record has provided knowledge to better understand the continental faunas that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula in the Late Jurassic,” he said.