Dinosaurs A to Z
Titanosauria

Argentinosaurus huinculensis AR-jen-TEEN-oh-SOR-us

"Argentine lizard"

Argentinosaurus silhouette
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Argentinosaurus 35 m (115 ft) long
as long as 20 people standing fingertip to fingertip
silhouette · Cy Marchant (CC-BY) via PhyloPic
Length
35 m (115 ft) — About 35 m long, possibly 70–100 tonnes — among the largest land animals ever.
Period
Late Cretaceous (97–94 Mya)
Place
South America · Argentina
Food
Herbivore — Mid- and high-canopy plants — a vacuum cleaner for vegetation across South America.
Clade
Titanosauria Dinosauria Saurischia Sauropodomorpha Sauropoda Cretaceous super-sauropods: Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan.

A giant Argentine [[titanosaur]] known from a handful of bones, perhaps the largest land animal ever.

Argentinosaurus reconstruction by Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com)
Reconstruction · Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) (CC-BY)

Argentinosaurus was a titanosaur — one of the giant sauropods of the Late Cretaceous. We don’t have a complete skeleton, but the few vertebrae and limb bones found are so enormous that nearly any estimate places it among the largest animals ever to walk the Earth. A single back vertebra is taller than a person.

More about Argentinosaurus

Discovery

Named by José F. Bonaparte and Rodolfo Coria · 1993 · Heredia's farm "Las Overas" near Plaza Huincul, in Neuquén Province, Argentina

In 1987 a farmer, Guillermo Heredia, found the first bone (now thought to be a fibula) on his farm, at first believing it was a petrified log. José Bonaparte led a larger excavation in 1989 that recovered back vertebrae, part of the sacrum, and a rib from the same individual, and Bonaparte and Coria formally named the genus in 1993.

The name means "Argentine lizard". The species name A. huinculensis refers to Plaza Huincul, near where the first fossils were found.

José F. Bonaparte. Argentine palaeontologist who led the 1989 excavation of the site and, with Rodolfo Coria, formally described and named Argentinosaurus in 1993.

How do you measure a dinosaur you barely have?
Because so few bones were recovered, palaeontologists estimate the size of Argentinosaurus by scaling up more complete relatives such as Saltasaurus, Futalognkosaurus, and Puertasaurus. This is why published length estimates vary considerably between researchers and years rather than settling on one figure.
Where does Argentinosaurus sit in the titanosaur family tree?
Relationships within Titanosauria are among the least understood of all dinosaur groups. Bonaparte and Coria originally proposed a family called Andesauridae for it, but later studies found that group invalid or paraphyletic, so its exact placement remains debated.

What we know

  • Known from a partial skeleton — vertebrae, ribs, leg bones.
  • A single vertebra weighs about 90 kg.
  • Lived in South America alongside Mapusaurus, a giant carcharodontosaurid predator.
  • Member of Titanosauria, the family that included most Late Cretaceous giant sauropods.

What we guess

  • Total weight — estimates range from 70 to over 100 tonnes.
  • Exact length — extrapolations from incomplete bones range from 30 to 40 m.
  • How long it took to reach adult size — likely decades of fast growth.