NM's Alamosaurus: Largest Dinosaur on Continent

Alamosaurus bone

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Remember the Alamosaurus? Well, some new discoveries about the ancient sauropod dinosaur might make it tough to forget. A paper published on Tuesday by researchers from Montana State University and the State Museum of Pennsylvania identifies the Alamosaurus as the largest that ever roamed North America. MSU paleontologist Denver Fowler, one of the paper's authors, told KRQE the Alamosaurus weighed around 70 tons when it roamed the Earth near the end of the Cretaceous period more than 65 million years ago. The Alamosaurus isn't new to paleontologists. It was discovered in the Alamo Wash of the San Juan Basin in the 1920s, but previously discovered fossils were either very fragmented or from younger dinosaurs. But then researchers dug up a femur and two large vertebrae in New Mexico between 2003 and 2006. After analysis, paleontologists were able to compare those vertebrae to other gigantic sauropod dinosaurs. The Alamosaurus is now considered to have been comparably sized to the South American Argentinosaurus, known as the largest dinosaur on the planet. Fowler says the Alamosaurus was the largest dinosaur in North America, but not the longest. Another New Mexico dinosaur, the Seismosaurus, was far longer. Read full story here: New New Mexico

NM's Alamosaurus: Largest Dinosaur on Continent