Scientists Dig Up Southeast Asia’s Largest Dinosaur, Names It Nagatitan

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• New long-necked dinosaur, Nagatitan, found in Thailand.
• This plant-eating sauropod weighed 27 tonnes, 88 feet long.
• Named Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, it lived 100-120 million years ago.
• Discovery marks a unique, significant find for Thailand’s paleontology.

While scientists were digging as part of their normal procedure to explore something new and unique, they went on to find the remains of a new long-necked dinosaur in Thailand.

It is said from identifying the remains that the dinosaur belonged to the sauropod family, which are plant-eating species of the giant titans. They are known for their long necks, tails, and enormous size.

Size And Name

The largest dinosaur found in Southeast Asia, the Nagatitan, weighed around 27 tonnes, approximately as much as nine adult Asian elephants, and measured 88 feet in length. The remains were discovered beside a pond in northeastern Thailand by a team of researchers from the UK and Thailand.

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The species has been termed as Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, where Naga specifies an old serpent species from South Asian mythology, and chaiyaphumensis means “from Chaiyaphum”, the province where the fossils were discovered. It has been said that the species existed around 100-120 million years ago.

In a report by CNN News, lead study author and paleontologist Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a PhD student at University College London, said, “We don’t have a lot of specimens that are of that scale in Thailand,”. Hence, this marks one of the most unique discoveries in Thailand in terms of dinosaur remains.

He also added, “When I first laid eyes on the humerus, it was taller than me, and that was quite surprising,”.

He stated that the naga was the ‘last titan’ of Thailand because the fossils were found in the country’s youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation.

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Childhood Dream

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, whose home country is Thailand, marked his childhood dream of naming and discovering a dinosaur. He said, “It fulfills a kind of childhood promise,”.

The scholar also commented on how Thailand has “some of the highest diversity” of fossils found in Asia due to having a thick layer of sedimentary rocks from the Mesozoic era, approximately 252 to 66 million years ago.