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Andesaurus delgadoi

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Description

FORGOTTEN GIANTS: species #3 - Andesaurus delgadoi

Location: El Chocón, Argentina (Río Limay Formation)
Time: Albian-Cenomanian epochs (transition from Early to Late Cretaceous)
Length: 100ft. (30m)
Probable mass: 65-70 tons

WARNING: This image is OUTDATED! Andesaurus was not 100 ft. long, it was more like 66 ft. long. The vertebrae are far smaller than those of Argentinosaurus. I produced this image due to lack of reliable information at the time (and the flat-out wrong numbers in Dougal Dixon's books...). However I am not taking it down, because I want people to know how often "accepted facts" about dinosaurs are often not based on the actual data. To see the corrected version, click here: [link]

The large basal titanosaur Andesaurus delgadoi, fully restored in hi-fi profile and frontal views for the FIRST TIME ever. The skeletal art is also the first ever done for this species.

Andesaurus was described in 1991, but since then very little research has been done on it. It's the founding member of the family Andesauridae, one of the most primitive families of titanosaurs - yet despite being the namesake of the group that includes the famed Argentinosaurus, it's very obscure and still not well-understood. It was long, with tall neural spines on its back (which was probably close to horizontal) and very robust hips. It's not a very extreme design for a titanosaur - its elegance lies in its subtlety. This animal was the template - the forerunner of all subsequent titanosaur body designs.

Missing bones whose shapes can be reasonably well-approximated are shaded, I did not figure speculative neck bones since we literally have no clue what they would have looked like. Skeletal and accompanying diagrams of specific vertebrae are based on photographs of the fossils and on scale diagrams in Salgado et. al. 1997.
Image size
6736x4404px 3.02 MB
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