Amateur Fossil Find Turns Out to Be Big
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
A neck bone found 12 years ago by amateur fossil hunters belongs to the biggest dinosaur discovered in Britain and possibly Europe, according to a report in the Cretaceous Research Journal. “The vertebra is from a sauropod that was probably over 66 feet long and could have weighed about 40, 50 tons,” said Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth.
The find is significant,” Naish said. “We thought sauropods died out at the end of the Jurassic period. This shows that they lived well into the Cretaceous.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
