Discovered in Australia, 'the southern titan' - a 16 foot tall dinosaur almost the length of a Boeing 737 - has been classified as a new species
- A dinosaur found in Australia is now one of the 15 largest in the world.
- "The southern titan" is 16 feet tall and a little under 100 feet long.
- Scientists categorized it as a new species believed to have lived 92 to 96 million years ago.
A 16 foot tall and almost 100-foot long dinosaur was discovered in Australia, making it the largest found in the country.
It's close to the length of the Boeing 737 aircraft, which is 110 feet long.
The skeleton was discovered in 2007 and is now a new classified species, called Australotitan cooperensis.
Australotitan or "the southern titan" is one the 15 largest dinosaur specimens found in the world and was documented in a study published Monday in the science journal PeerJ.
"Australotitan adds to the growing list of uniquely Australian dinosaur species discovered in Outback Queensland, and just as importantly showcases a totally new area for dinosaur discovery in Australia," Scott Hocknull, one of the lead scientists of the new study, said in a press release.
The fossil was initially nicknamed "Cooper" since it was discovered on a farm near Cooper Creek in southwest Queensland.
The report said the species likely lived during the Cretaceous Period, somewhere between 92 to 96 million years ago, and were a type of giant sauropod, a group of herbivores that had very long necks, long tails, small heads, and four thick, pillar-like legs.
Late last year, scientists were puzzled by another dinosaur discovery: a species that had long hair and stiff ribbon-like structures coming from its shoulders.
It was named Ubijara jubatus. Scientists think it lived around 110 million years ago in northeastern Brazil.