Giant titanosaur, bigger than Dippy the diplodocus, to ‘visit’ London's Natural History Museum

London's Natural History Museum is soon to be visited by a literally towering guest bigger the other famous one. The museum will welcome in Spring, the skeleton of a giant titanosaur. The extraordinatry skeleton will be bigger than the famous Dippy the diplodocus. The titanosaur will be the museum's latest star attraction.

Dippy the diplodocus, the famous skeleton, stands at 6.7 metres and measures 26 metres in length. The titanosaur, though 5 metres in height, measures 37 metres in length. The behemoth roamed the Earth 100 million years ago. The titanosaur, known by its scientific name Patagotitan mayorum, was one of the biggest creatures ever to walk the earth. It weighed a whopping 57 tonnes and likely would have shaken the ground when it roamed around.

“The sheer scale of this creature is extraordinary,” said museum dinosaur expert Prof Paul Barrett. “Even when you see it next to one of today’s giant animals, like an elephant, it simply dwarfs them. It’s humbling.”

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Barrett was quoted by The Guardian.

The Patagonian mayorum was found in 2010 when a ranch owner in Patagonia (Argentina) noticed a huge thigh bone sticking out of the ground. Fossil experts in Argentina soon examined the site and unearthed more than 200 bones.

“They were herbivores that gobbled up plants and leaves and fermented them in their vast stomachs, producing huge amounts of methane as a byproduct – so you would not want to hang around the back end of one of these animals,” Barrett said as quoted by The Guardian.

“In fact, some people argue that plant-eating dinosaurs like these belched out so much methane they contributed to the greenhouse heating that then had the planet in its grip.”