140 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur’s Huge Bone Found in Southwest France


140 Million-Year-Old Dinosaur’s Huge Bone Found in Southwest France

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Palaeontologists unearthed a two meters long thigh bone that belonged to a giant sauropod dinosaur around 140 million years ago.

The enormous bone — which weighs in at around half a ton — was unearthed from a dinosaur fossil-rich dig site in the department of Charente south west France.

At the time that the giant dinosaur would have lived, the area — located near the town of Cognac — would have been a marshland, the Daily Mail reported.

Located in southwestern France, the Angeac-Charente dig site is unique across all of Europe, with paleontologists having already uncovered around 7,500 bones — from 45 different species of dinosaur — since excavations began back in 2010.

'This femur is huge! And in an exceptional state of conservation,' Angouleme Museum curator Jean-François Tournepiche told The Local.

'It's very moving.'

Alongside the thigh bone, volunteers with the National Museum of Natural History in Paris also uncovered a giant pelvis bone from the same layer of clay.

Experts believe that the thigh bone belonged to a sauropod — one of a group of long-necked, plant-eating dinosaurs that include some of the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth.

'We can see the insertions of muscles and tendons, scars,' added Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at Paris' National Museum of Natural History.

'This is a very rare find as large pieces tend to collapse on themselves, to fragment.'

Paleontologists have been working to reconstitute a complete sauropod skeleton from several different specimens that have been unearthed from Angeac-Charente in the last decade — with the reconstruction now around 50 per cent complete.

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