Dreadnoughtus, there's no indication that there was any cessation or slowing of growth [in the bones],” he said. “When it died at 65 tons, it was growing fast, which is kind of scary.”
Titanosaurs, a subgroup of sauropods that includes Dreadnoughtus, are thought to grow rapidly and reach full adult size in only 20 or 30 years. But surprisingly, their eggs are not overly large. The largest dinosaur eggs found have been about the size of a soccer ball.
“The hatchling from an egg the size of a football is not very big,” said Chiappe. “But in two decades, the hatchling would grow to become an enormous animal the size of two, three school buses put together.”
Chiappe, who has worked in Patagonia for a number of years and is originally from Argentina, discovered a large sauropod hatchery in 1997 that served as evidence that these dinosaurs laid eggs and huddled together in large nesting colonies.
“I would imagine [Dreadnoughtus] would have had a very similar nesting behavior: the congregation of hundreds or thousands of 60-ton females gathering together to nest in a lost valley somewhere,” he said.
The researchers have a whopping 10 Dreadnoughtus papers in the pipeline, four of which are already written, that take the analysis a step further. One of the upcoming studies looks at the dinosaur's locomotion through robotic and computer simulations, using 3D scans of the bones that are publicly available for free download along with the current study.
“Kids are going to be able to download the Dreadnoughtus bones and play with them,” said Lacovara.
Due to its monstrous size, Chiappe expects Dreadnoughtus to join the ranks of popular sauropod favorites such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus on the road to “Jurassic Park”-like stardom.
“This is the kind of creature that will soon make it into Hollywood,” he said. “You can guarantee that the next documentary on dinosaurs will feature this new creature.”
Kim is a freelance science journalist currently based in Philadelphia.