World's largest dino bones found near Scott Base

Fossil remains found near New Zealand's Antarctic Scott Base have been identified as the largest creature to ever walk the Earth.

The four to six tonne, seven to eight metre long dinosaur has been dug out of rock and ice at the base of Mt Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore Glacier, 700kms south of Scott Base and in New Zealand's Ross Dependency,

Labelled "Glacialisaurus hammeri" it lived about 190 million years ago.

A statement out today from Chicago's Field Museum says the massive plant-eating primitive sauropodomorph was a new genus and species.

A description of the new monster has been published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica and is based on partial foot, leg and ankle bones.

"The fossils were painstakingly removed from the ice and rock using jackhammers, rock saws and chisels under extremely difficult conditions over the course of two field seasons," said Nathan Smith, a graduate student at The Field Museum.

"They are important because they help to establish that primitive sauropodomorph dinosaurs were more broadly distributed than previously thought, and that they coexisted with their cousins, the true sauropods."

The find was named after Dr. William Hammer, a professor at Augustana College in the US who led the two field trips to Antarctica that uncovered the fossils.

The discovery shows that sauropodomorphs were widely distributed in the Early Jurassic-not only in China, South Africa, South America and North America, but also in Antarctica.

"This was probably due to the fact that major connections between the continents still existed at that time, and because climates were more equitable across latitudes than they are today," Smith said.

- © Fairfax NZ News