Dinosaurs A to Z
Titanosauria

Patagotitan mayorum PAT-uh-go-TIE-tan

"Patagonian giant"

Patagotitan silhouette
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Patagotitan 37 m (121 ft) long
as long as 22 people standing fingertip to fingertip
silhouette · Cy Marchant (CC-BY) via PhyloPic
Length
37 m (121 ft) — About 37 m long, ~70 tonnes — possibly the largest dinosaur known from good remains.
Period
Early Cretaceous (102–95 Mya)
Place
South America · Argentina · Patagonia
Food
Herbivore — Mid-canopy plants — its long neck reached most of what a forest could offer.
Clade
Titanosauria Dinosauria Saurischia Sauropodomorpha Sauropoda Cretaceous super-sauropods: Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan.

A giant Patagonian titanosaur once hailed as the largest land animal, now looking more ordinary.

Patagotitan reconstruction by UnexpectedDinoLesson
Reconstruction · UnexpectedDinoLesson (CC-BY)

Patagotitan was named in 2017 from a remarkably complete bonebed in Patagonia — six individuals found together, with enough bones to actually reconstruct the whole animal. It rivaled Argentinosaurus in size but is better known. A cast of its skeleton is so large the American Museum of Natural History had to put its head out the door of its exhibit hall.

More about Patagotitan

Discovery

Named by José Luis Carballido and colleagues · 2017 · the La Flecha site near Trelew, Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina (Cerro Barcino Formation)

Part of a lower bone was found in 2010 by a farm laborer, Aurelio Hernández, in the desert near La Flecha. The find was reported to the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio in Trelew, which ran expeditions between 2012 and 2015 that uncovered more than 200 fossils, including 130 sauropod bones.

The text does not state what the name means or its language origin.

José Luis Carballido. A paleontologist who, with Diego Pol, led the La Flecha excavation, named Patagotitan mayorum in 2017, and used the genus in a 2022 re-definition of the group Colossosauria.

Was <em>Patagotitan</em> really the biggest dinosaur of all?
Early 2014 news reports and the 2017 paper suggested it outsized Argentinosaurus, but later estimates by Gregory S. Paul (2019, 2024) and Otero and Carballido (2020) revised it down. Science writer Riley Black and paleontologist Matt Wedel cautioned that, based on available measurements, Patagotitan was comparable in size to other known giant titanosaurA late, often armoured sauropod group; includes the largest dinosaurs.s rather than clearly the largest. Its true ranking remains debated.
For the curious → Where does <em>Patagotitan</em> sit on the titanosaur family tree?
Titanosaur interrelationships have historically been unstable and have varied between analyses. Because Patagotitan is one of the best-known titanosaurs, it has been consistently grouped with Argentinosaurus within Lognkosauria, and its 2017 holotypeThe single specimen that formally defines a species' name. (MPEF-PV 3400) helped support the 2022 re-definition of Colossosauria.

What we know

  • Named in 2017 from six individuals found in one quarry in Patagonia.
  • Largest dinosaur known from a complete-enough skeleton to be confidently measured.
  • Skeleton cast displayed at the American Museum of Natural History.
  • Lived in what was then a warm, humid floodplain.

What we guess

  • Whether Patagotitan or Argentinosaurus was actually larger — current estimates favor Patagotitan slightly.
  • How a single body could function with such a long neck — extreme circulation challenges.
  • Whether the bonebed represents a herd that died together or individuals deposited over years.