10 meters, 5 tons: a new predatory dinosaur discovered

Carnivorous dinosaurs megaraptors are considered one of the largest and most ferocious dinosaurs. Researchers from the Argentine National Council for Scientific and Technological Research said they discovered the remains of a new species of megaraptor that lived here 70 million years ago near the city of El Calafate, and it is the largest of all previously known. The new species was named Maip macrothorax.

The length of his body was 9-10 meters, weight - five tons, that is, he was about twice as heavy as a rhinoceros. Features of the skeleton allowed him to stand on his hind legs and run on them. The bones of the megaraptor had many voids, so these hunters were light and fast, unlike, for example, overweight tyrannosaurs. The megaraptor had a long tail and long legs, and its claws - probably its main weapon - reached a length of 35 centimeters. Maip macrothorax was one of the last to live in Argentina before the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, which happened at the end of the Cretaceous period due to a meteorite fall.

70 million years ago there were no Andes here, and the climate was much warmer. Megaraptors lived in a forest, almost a jungle, overgrown with dense vegetation and inhabited by frogs, turtles, small birds and mammals. But who exactly was the prey of Maip macrothorax is still unknown.

The very first megaraptor was discovered in 1996 in Argentina, then paleontologists managed to find its relatives in Australia, Japan and Thailand.