An actual post about actual dinosaurs

The light at the end of today's miserable snot-ridden tunnel is coming home to the news that archaeologists in Argentina have discovered the remains of a new titanosaur (aka super-dinosaur), a Futalognkosaurus dukei (pronounced foot-ah-long-koh-sohr-us), which was 35-40 metres long. It ate leaves, had a tiny brain and would have looked a lot like this:










They've only found a few bits of him so far, because his remains show signs of being mauled by predators. My favourite quote regarding my NEW FAVOURITE HERBIVORE is this one: "I'm pretty certain it's a new species," agreed Peter Mackovicky, associate curator for dinosaurs at Chicago's Field Museum, who was not involved with the discovery. "I've seen some of the remains of Futalognkosaurus and it is truly gigantic."

Now, did I mention somewhere on this blog that I love dinosaurs? I think this one is especially special, because not only is he enormous, but he's also really, really stupid, his brain would still only have been about the size of a large human fist. He'd be easier to confuse than a cow, and they're so stupid that they gather around rosebushes for shelter.

He'll never be able to top the T-Rex, who stole my heart as a child, but he's definitely in my all time top three dinosaurs now, behind the T-Rex and Velociraptor.