Dinos Down Under: Titanosaurs in Australia

Newly discovered Australian titanosaur Savannasaurus elliottorum goes for a stroll...can you hear, can you hear the thunder? Credit: Travis Tischler/Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History. Meet Wade and Matilda, the newest superstars from Australia: Bigger than the Hemsworth brothers, these two titanosaurs are more than the sum of their fossilized parts. Their discovery helps us piece together how the biggest and brawniest dinosaurs ended up Down Under. Paleontologist Stephen Poropat and colleagues, publishing today in Scientific Reports, describe Wade and Matilda from Queensland's Winton Formation. The fossiliferous deposits have offered up a number of other dinosaurs, insects, fish and other critters from the heart of the Cretaceous, about 95 to 98 million years ago. Wade — the team's nickname for the specimen they describe as a new species, Savannasaurus elliottorum — is one of the most complete Australian examples of sauropod ever found. And within the long-necked, long-tailed herbivorous sauropod family, Wade falls into the titanosaur category. These were the biggest of the big.