Bruhathkayasaurus matleyi is a dinosaur species known from a few fossilized bones, including the ilium and ischium (both are hip bones), part of a femur (upper hind leg bone)
…, tibia (lower hind leg bone), a radius (a bone in the forelimb), and part of the platycoelous caudal centrum (a specific tail vertebrae). The fossils were found in Mongolia and date to approximately 70 million years ago, during the Maastrichtian stage of the Cretaceous period. Originally, the remains were believed to be those of a large carnosaur, a type of meat eating dinosaur. However, they were found to actually belong to a sauropod, a huge, long necked, four-legged, plant eater similar to Apatosaurus or Diplodocus, only far larger. All known information on the species is from a paper published by Yadagiri and Ayyasami in 1989. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot in the way of diagnostic details. Because the paper isn't thorough, the existence of the species has been questioned. Some believe that the bones were possibly large pieces of petrified wood that were misidentified. If, however, the paper was correct, the animal's tibia, or shin bone, would have been 6.6 feet long, 29% longer than that of Argentinosaurus, which is the largest known dinosaur to date. Size estimates based on the information in the papers vary significantly, but are larger than the Argentinosaurus. Until the remains are properly described, however, none of this is certain. In conclusion, Bruhathkayosaurus is a sauropod dinosaur whose fragmentary remains were poorly described. Because of this, it is difficult to estimate its size, although there is a good chance it would be larger than any known dinosaurs to date. (MORE)