The BBC Earth documentary special visits Ontario-based company, Research Casting International (RCI), who become enlisted to reconstruct a life-size skeleton of the newly-discovered dinosaur
(Toronto, ON – July 10, 2023) – On Sunday, August 6 on BBC Earth, Sir David Attenborough will tell the story of the fossil discovery and reconstruction of the largest known dinosaur, a new species of titanosaur. Measuring 37m long – close to four school buses put end to end – and weighing 70 metric tons, latest calculations show that this new giant titanosaur is the biggest animal ever to walk the Earth. Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur premieres Sunday, August 6 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on BBC Earth in Canada.
In 2013, a shepherd spotted the tip of a gigantic fossil bone sticking out of a rock in La Flecha Farm in the Chubut Province in the Argentinian desert. When the news reached palaeontologists at the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum (MEF) in Trelew, Argentina, they set up camp at the discovery site. The first bone turned out to be a 2.4m long (femur) thigh bone, the largest ever found. By the end of the dig they had uncovered more than 220 bones. As the documentary reveals, these fossils came from not just one dinosaur but seven, all belonging to a new species of the giant plant-eating titanosaur which is yet to be given its own scientific name.
Dr Diego Pol, lead scientist on the excavation based at the Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, Argentina said: “It was like a paleontological crime scene, a unique thing that you don’t find anywhere else in the world with the potential of discovering all kinds of new facts about titanosaurs. According to our estimates this animal weighed 70 tons. A comparison of the back bones shows that this animal was 10 per cent larger than Argentinosaurus, the previous record holder. So we have discovered the largest dinosaur ever known.”
Attenborough And The Giant Dinosaur follows the twists and turns of this forensic investigation. He witnesses the uncovering, cleaning and examination of these vast fossils for the first time. Using state-of-the-art graphics the film reveals what scientists think the internal structure of a dinosaur looked like and how it worked.
Sir David Attenborough visits the dig site to witness the uncovering of these vast fossils, and the MEF labs in Trelew where they are cleaned and examined. He talks to the palaeontologists studying the fossils along with comparative anatomy experts, and looks at what the bones reveal about the lives of these dinosaurs with the help of 3D scanning, CGI visuals and animation. Finally, MEF enlists the Ontario-based company, Research Casting International (RCI), as well as a company in Argentina where the original bones were found, to reconstruct a life-sized skeleton of the newly-discovered titanosaur, which Sir David Attenborough sees being completed at the end of the documentary special.
Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur is a BBC Earth production with PBS and THIRTEEN Productions LLC.
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Notes to Editor:
Contributors:
- Ben Garrod – Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge UK
- Dr Diego Pol – Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, Argentina
- Dr José Luis Carballido – Museum of Paleontology Egidio Feruglio, Trelew, Argentina
- Prof. John Hutchinson – Royal Veterinary College, London, UK
- Dr Luis Chiappe – Natural History Museum Los Angeles County, USA
Facts and Figures:
- The giant titanosaur measures 37m long, close to four school buses put end to end.
- The neck of the titanosaur would probably be held roughly horizontal for most of the time, but they could have fed from the ground or reached upwards for food to around 14 m in height. Giraffes, the tallest animal around today, can in comparison reach 4-5.5m in height.
- Titanosaur’s heart would have been the weight of three people and nearly 2m (6ft) in circumference. It would have pushed up to 90 litres of blood round with one beat.
- The titanosaur would have eaten the equivalent of a skip-full of food a day, using its huge gut to slowly digest its plant-based diet.
- It was longer than a blue whale but not as heavy.
- The titanosaurs were from the Cretaceous Period 66 – 145 million years ago; a time when large dinosaurs dominated South America.
- The titanosaur featured in this documentary is dated to 101.6 million years old.