除了霸王龙和蓝鲸,纽约的美国自然历史博物馆又多了一个必看的展览:37.2米长的“泰坦巨龙”。这是该博物馆首次展出这个新发现的庞然大物。
“泰坦巨龙”展将于15日正式对游客开放。记者在14日的媒体预展上看到,由于体型过于巨大,近6米高的四楼展厅都无法将之完全容纳,“泰坦巨龙”硕大的头部不得不伸出展览大厅,似乎要和游客打招呼。
科学家推断,这只“泰坦巨龙”站起来肩高约6.1米,如果它约11.9米长的脖子以45度角抬起,将有约14米高。
古生物学者说,这个巨大的食草类恐龙重约70吨,相当于十头非洲大象。据介绍,由于真实骨架太重难以安装,展厅现场呈现的“泰坦巨龙”骨架并非真的恐龙化石,而是由3D打印的玻璃纤维组成。
生物学者推断这头恐龙属于泰坦巨龙,但由于它是2014年才在阿根廷巴塔哥尼亚地区的沙漠中被发现,古生物学者还来不及给它命名。据称,当时在挖掘现场共找到223块化石,其中包括一个约2.44米的巨大腿骨,它独特的形状和尺寸使古生物学者相信他们找到了一个新的物种,这也是已知最大的恐龙化石之一。
据介绍,古生物学者当时在现场找到了六具恐龙化石,都是成年不久的食草恐龙。据推断,这些恐龙生活在距今1亿年前,属于白垩纪时期。
美国自然历史博物馆馆长埃伦·富特说,我们非常高兴呈现这一令人惊叹的展览。“本博物馆将继续站在地球生物历史研究的前沿,并向所有观众展示最新的发现。”据称,“泰坦巨龙”的发现团队领导者之一迭戈·波尔就是在该博物馆获得博士学位。
The biggest dinosaur ever to be shown at the American Museum of Natural History will be unveiled on Friday, and its head will graze the ceiling. Known as the Titanosaur, it is one of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, and lived 100 million years ago
The 122-foot-long dinosaur stands 20 feet tall and likely weighed 70 tons, about the same as 10 African elephants. Its thigh bone is nearly 8 feet long. Researchers dug up the bones in a desert region of Argentine Patagonia, after a farmer found what he suspected to be fossils
The Titanosaur's femur, pictured on the left, is nearly 8 feet long. The researchers used this to estimate that the giant weight roughly 70 tons. Titanosaur forelimb, pictured on the right: Scapula, humerus, radius, and ulna
At first, the researchers from Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio didn't realize just how big a discovery had been made. It was days later that the excavation revealed a never-before-seen species
The Titanosaur is so large that it will not fit into one room in the American Museum of Natural History ; its head will reach the ceiling, poking out of the gallery and into the hall along with part of the neck
The Titanosaur will be shown to the public in a walking pose, with its neck stretched out toward the museum's fourth-floor elevators. This is the only way the dinosaur would fit in the building. Some of the best-preserved bones will also be on display, amongst them being the massive femur
The researchers dug up more than 200 fossils from the site, revealing a species palaeontologists had never seen before. To build the display, the bones were recreated through plaster casts and 3-D printing
The species lived in the forests of modern-day Patagonia 100 to 95 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period, according to AFP. This specimen is of a young adult, of unknown sex. Experts say that young herding animals can become isolated from their group and die of stress and hunger
The real fossils would have been far too heavy to mount, so the life-size model is made up of 3D prints made of fiberglass of the bones. With its neck elevated, the titanosaur would have been tall enough to peer into the window of a five-story building, the museum said