Titanosaurus needs good home

Scientists in Argentina appear to have found what could be the largest dinosaur known so far by paleontology. Dubbed “titanosaur,” it may have been as tall as a six-story building.

News stories point out that the thigh bone already uncovered is, at 7.9 feet, taller than most basketball players, and the largest such vertebrate thigh bone ever unearthed. Most of the skeleton remains unexcavated, but volumetric estimates put the weight of the titanosaur at some 176,000 pounds, or about 15 mature African elephants — today’s largest land mammal. The titanosaur’s 132-foot length is almost twice that of the apatosaurus (or brontosaurus), long thought the largest of dinosaurs.

Millions of 5-year-olds around the world are excited by this discovery in the fossil-rich Patagonia region of Argentina. An even more excited species of human may be the architects. “Given the ... magnitude this animal will bring along when it’s reconstructed,” says Ruben Cuneo, director of a dinosaur museum in the Argentine city of Trelew, “there won’t be a building that can contain it. I think we’re going to need a new home.”

Perhaps they can bring the bones to New York City, where a building of sufficient height is sure to be found. Or maybe it can take up residence in Providence, where the Industrial Trust (or “Superman”) Building seeks a new tenant. (Brown still lacks a permanent home for its Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, whose mandate could perhaps be broadened.)

Wherever the titanosaur finds its home, science is sure to keep the pot boiling as paleontologists jockey to upstage each other in ranking the largest of prehistory’s candidates for extinction. This game of one-upmanship goes back centuries and gave us, among other things, the brontosaurus, which became the most popular dinosaur in the world — remember the favorite meal of the Flintstones? (the brontosaurus burger) — even though it never existed.