Australia’s largest Dinosaur discovered so far is 6.5m tall and up to 30m long. Palaeontologists say the giant creature named Australotitan cooperensis – meaning ‘the southern titan from the Cooper’ – was as long as a basketball court and taller than a B-double truck.
This herbivore creature has been given the nickname ‘Cooper’ after the place it was discovered near Cooper Creek in southwest Queensland. Cooper is among the top 10-15 largest Dinosaurs which have ever lived on Earth. Fourteen-year-old Sandy Mackenzie discovered the first piece of Cooper in 2004. He made the discovery on his family’s sheep and cattle property near the town of Eromanga. Sandy originally thought he had found a piece of of rock but his rock was was later identified by the Queensland Museum as a part the fossilised remains of a 95 million-year-old plant-eating Dinosaur.
Two years after Sandy’s ground breaking discovery, mother Robyn, found the first bone of the new species.
About 17 years of subsequent research by the Queensland Museum and the Eromanga Natural History Museum led to “Cooper” officially being declared as the biggest Australian dino and was described the in international science journal PeerJ. 3D printing and new digital technology has been used to identify ‘Cooper’
Source and pix: Courtesy Kids News.