A team of paleontologists with the possible skeleton of the newly dug Patagotitan mayorum dinosaur (Source: AFP)

A team of Argentine scientists recently announced that they have unearthed large fossils dating back to 98 million years old in the southwestern region of this country.

Scientists think these may be the largest dinosaur fossils ever discovered.

According to the announcement of the CTYS scientific agency of the National University of La Matanza on January 20, these fossil dinosaur bones seem to be 10-20% larger in size than the bones believed to be from Patagotitan mayorum – the largest dinosaur ever discovered and also native to Argentina.

Patagotitan mayorum, weighing about 70 tons and 40 meters long, belongs to the sauropod family of sauropods with long tails and necks, herbivores, and is the largest terrestrial creature that has ever existed on Earth.

Mr. Alejandro Otero working at La Plata Museum (Argentina) is working on grafting more than 20 vertebrae and pelvic bones found so far to recreate the image of a new dinosaur.

Mr. Otero published the report on this unidentified dinosaur in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research.

Meanwhile, scientists continue to search and unearth more fossils of the dinosaur buried deep in the rock.

They hope to find a large femur or forelimb bones that will help estimate the body mass of this long-extinct creature.

According to paleontologist Jose Luis Carballido of the Egidio Feruglio museum, the large fossils were discovered in 2012 in the Neuquen River valley, but excavation work only started in 2015.

“We have more than half of the tailbone and a lot of hip bones,” said Mr. Carballido, who also worked on Patagotitan a few years ago. It’s clearly still inside the rock layer, so we’ll be digging for a few more years.”

The director of the Zapala Museum of Natural Sciences, geologist Alberto Garrido, said that the giant skeleton was discovered in the bedrock dating to about 98 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.

“We suspect this specimen is probably complete or near-complete,” said Garrido. Everything depends on the results of the excavation. Regardless of whether this dinosaur was larger than the Patagotitan, the discovery of such a large dinosaur alone is novel.”