Dinosaur leviathans of Patagonia come back to life

Giganotosaurus lords over Fernbank's Great Hall

October 18, 2000
Web posted at: 12:35 PM EDT (1635 GMT)

In this story: Egg fossil horizon Bones and money Dino does its duty RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Richard Stenger
CNN.com Writer

(CNN) -- Millions of years ago, the largest dinosaurs rumbled through the steamy jungles of northern Patagonia. Now a desert of bleak mountains and blistering heat, the remote South American region is giving up a bonanza of bones from the behemoths, some of which have come back to life in North American natural history museums.

A spate of mysterious monster finds has placed Argentina on the paleontology map in recent years. Fossilized discoveries over the past decade include Giganotosaurus, the largest dinosaur carnivore; Argentinosaurus, the largest herbivore; and other bones that suggest an even longer species.

INTERACTIVE Ages of the Earth     FACT SHEETS Argentinosaurus Giganotosaurus     ALSO Fernbank web cam     MESSAGE BOARD Animal world

Relatively unexplored, the fossil fields of Patagonia could produce scientific bounties that rival or surpass prolific dinosaur discovery sites in the western United States and Canada, according to scientists.

"They have vast areas of rocks that appear to have a lot of dinosaur remains in them," said Karl Flessa, former president of the Paleontology Society. "It's a matter of them having rocks of the appropriate age and character."

Jurassic. Triassic. Cretaceous. All of the great periods of the dinosaurs show up on the fossil history of Argentina.

"It has one of the most complete fossil records that we know of," said Marissa Vivona of the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, which sponsors dinosaur hunters in the South American country. She recently accompanied an expedition as an observer, but managed to get her hands in the dirt.

"Someone handed me a hand tool and said, 'Here, dig.' I found bone fragments. It was amazing. There are dinosaurs everywhere."

Paleontologists Rodolfo Coria and Philip Currie dig up a carnivorous dinosaur

Among the places Vivona visited was a stretch of rugged mountain terrain riddled with dinosaur eggs in Neuquen Province. The Patagonian region in the foothills of the Andes Mountain is particularly rich in dinosaur strikes.

Rodolfo Coria, one of the foremost Argentinean paleontologists, has often taken teams to do field work at the site, Auca Maheuvo, a name inspired by a nearby volcano and the Spanish word for "eggs."

"We already recorded that this egg fossil horizon extends more than 20 kilometers. That is the largest dinosaur-nesting site in the world," said Coria, a native Patagonian and paleontologist at the Carmen Funes Museum.

Thousands of eggs dating back 80 million years litter the land, a discovery that includes the first known impressions of dinosaur embryo skins. The young dinos were likely the progeny of sauropods or plant-eaters known as Titanosaurs, which grew in size to 50 feet. In contrast, the fossilized eggs, which could fit in a human hand, preserve teeth as small as 1/10th of a inch.

The badlands of Patagonia have produced other remarkable dinosaur fossils as well. In the southern Negro Province, a harsh landscape filled with thorny bush and mountain goats, a farmer stumbled across what he though were stumps of petrified wood along a cliff. They turned out to be a cache of neck vertebrae, some as large as 3.8 feet across.

Paleontologists determined that the vertebrae came from perhaps the longest dinosaur ever, an unnamed species that could have towered five stories high, stretched 160 feet and tipped the scales at 10 tons.

Argentinosaurus excavation site in Patagonia

The dinosaur heritage of Argentina may be richer than that of the United States and Canada. But natural history programs in the south lack the financial power of their counterparts in the north. Some Argentinean museums must leave dinosaur bones outside and behind their buildings, lacking the money to display them.

"They (Argentineans) have the bones, the Americans have the money," Flessa said.

Helping balance the deficit, South and North American paleontologists and museums have forged productive partnerships that exchange dinosaurs and dollars.

Natural history museums in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Alberta, Canada, have sponsored expeditions throughout Argentina, working together with institutions in Buenos Aires and Patagonia.

Contributing more than $1 million to expeditions and research in Argentina, Fernbank is being rewarded with an invasion of the world's largest dinosaurs.

The Atlanta museum boasts the first complete display outside of Argentina of a Giganotosaurus, which in the 1990s dethroned T. Rex as the largest known land carnivore.

Coria began unearthing the first specimens in 1993. They were grouped together in a manner that Coria and others think means that the razor-toothed hunters lived in packs, a theory that challenges the traditional view that large meat-eaters were solitary creatures that hunted alone.

The curious can observe the 45-foot-long monster through a Fernbank web cam.

Unveiled in June, Giganotosaurus should be joined by other Argentineans during the winter and spring, including a flock of flying pterosaurs and an Argentinosaurus, the most massive known land animal.

The first Argentinosaurus fossils surfaced in Neuquen, just like Giganotosaurus, which may have preyed on the giant. The meal would have been considerable. Argentinosaurus tipped the scales between 80 and 100 tons.

What did Argentinosaurus eat? Plants, big ones, including possibly Arucaria trees, evergreens from the dinosaur age that still exist today.

At Fernbank, a 95-foot-long Argentinosaurus will tower nearly three stories, protecting a nest of eggs from the hungry Giganotosaurus.

Artist concept of completed display of Giganotosaurus, left, and Argentinosaurus at Fernbank museum

As Argentinean law forbids the export of dinosaur fossils, the display uses bone replicas. Flessa said the lack of original parts hardly matters.

"The techniques for making replicas of fossil bones are so good that it almost doesn't matter where the originals are any more," he said. "I don't think that science is hindered by the fact that the Argentinean government won't let dinosaurs outside the country."

Hall Train of Dinosaur Productions has lent his skill to reproduce copies of the Argentina dinosaur bones for Fernbank. The dinosaur reconstruction specialist has already produced some impressive works.

Train helped create a $20 million Triceratops for the Jurassic Park display at the new Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida.

"It walks, pees, farts, breathes. People think it's a real animal," Train said.

In Atlanta, others besides scientists are impressed by the awesome realism of Giganotosaurus. During a recent visit to Fernbank's Great Hall, Jacob Spiker, 9, and his brother Zachery, 6, stared at the behemoth, mouths and eyes wide open.

"I wouldn't want to feed it," Jacob said.

"I'm not scared of it. As long as it's dead," Zachery said.

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Fernbank Museum of Natural History
Carmen Funes Museum (en español)

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