The Titanosaur, Patagotitan mayorum
Early Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago; cast installed 2016
The skeleton is too long for the room. At the entrance to the fossil halls a titanosaur stretches thirty seven metres from its tail to a head that pokes out through the doorway to greet you in the corridor. This is Patagotitan mayorum, one of the largest animals ever to walk the Earth, a plant eater that weighed as much as ten African elephants. The cast was installed in 2016, only two years after the bones were excavated, and it has been the museum's most talked about dinosaur ever since.
Stand under the ribcage and look up. Each thigh bone is taller than a person, and the neck vertebrae, hollowed by air sacs like a bird's, are nearly a metre across. The head, by contrast, is tiny, because a sauropod did not chew; it stripped leaves and swallowed them whole. The pose is low and walking, with the neck held roughly level. Along one wall a few of the real fossil bones are displayed, including a femur that a single person can barely reach across, so you can see the difference between the cream coloured cast and the dark original.
The bones were discovered in 2012 when a ranch worker in Chubut, Patagonia, noticed a giant bone sticking out of the ground. Palaeontologists from the Egidio Feruglio Museum in Trelew went on to excavate more than two hundred bones from six individuals, making this the best known of the giant titanosaurs. The genus was named in 2017, and the species honours the Mayo family who own the ranch.
Did You Know? The skeleton is so long that it had to be positioned with its head sticking out of the gallery door.
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