London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 01, 2025

Gigantic dinosaur skeleton on show in London

Gigantic dinosaur skeleton on show in London

A colossus has landed in London: A cast of what was one of the biggest animals ever to walk the Earth is now on show at the Natural History Museum.

Patagotitan was a dinosaur that lived 100 million years ago in South America.

Measuring some 37m (121ft) from nose to tail, the beast could have weighed up to 60 or 70 tonnes in life.

The museum has brought over not just a representative skeleton but some of the real fossil bones first discovered in Argentina in 2014.

The largest is a 2.4m-long femur, or thigh bone. It's been erected upright to give visitors an extraordinary selfie opportunity.

There are interactive games and videos - and a few selfie opportunities


"Patagotitan was what we call a sauropod dinosaur," explained palaeontologist Prof Paul Barrett.

"It's a relative of things like Diplodocus that you might be a bit more familiar with. It's one of these large barrel-bodied animals with forced-out legs. It almost looks like a giant elephant that's had an anaconda snake threaded through it, with a very long neck and a long tail," he told BBC News.

The replica skeleton is on loan from Argentina's Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio (MEF), whose staff unearthed the original fossils.

The London institution had to put its thinking cap on to work out how best to display the creature.

It only just fits in its Waterhouse Gallery, its largest exhibition space. Even then, the end of the tail has had to be bent around a column.

The floor also needed to be strengthened, but, cleverly, engineers have been able to hide some of the supporting armature, or support frame, so that it looks as though the dinosaur is walking along the carpet.

"It's been quite the challenge, second only to hanging our blue whale from the ceiling in the museum's Hintze Hall," said head of technical production, Jez Burn.


The cast is accompanied by lots of interactive videos and games that explain the life stories of the exceptionally large sauropods that lived in the Cretaceous Period of Earth history.

Who exactly was the biggest of these titanosaurs is difficult to say, but animals like Patagotitan and another creature called Argentinosaurus were right up there.

"What's incredible about Patagotitan is the amount of the dinosaur that was found," said exhibition developer Sinéad Marron.

"The other giant dinosaurs are known from just a few fragments of bones, whereas the skeleton of Patagotitan is known from a couple of hundred bones from at least six different individuals. We simply know more about Patagotitan than all the other giants."

Get in there and touch. Patagotitan strides directly across the carpet. It's not on a plinth


Scientists are unsure why the titanosaurs were so big, but they have a good idea as to how they developed their immense bulk.

This probably had something to do with the relatively poor quality plant food available to them, which required a large digestive system to get the most out of it.

Essentially, they were giant fermentation tanks on sturdy legs.

Visitors will get to squeeze some tubes intended to simulate a titanosaur's intestines. Prepare to be shocked by the beast's tummy rumbles.

An animal as big as Patagotitan would have had to eat all day and most of the night to sustain itself.

By one calculation, the animal could have consumed over 130kg of plants every day. This is equivalent to approximately 515 round lettuces.

No wonder scientists describe titanosaurs as "ecosystem engineers". As they moved across the landscape, they would have cleared all vegetation in front of them.

Imagine the slurry production... from a whole herd.

It's a yucky thought but with it would have come the mass processing and shifting of nutrients, along with the dispersal of countless seeds.

The influence on the environment and the lives of all animals around at the time would have been profound.

The exhibition - Titanosaur: Life as the Biggest Dinosaur - opens on Friday and runs until 7 January next year. It is a ticketed event.

The dinosaur bones were unearthed in 2014 in Patagonia, Argentina

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Chinese and Indian Leaders Pursue Amity Amid Global Shifts
European Union Plans for Ukraine Deployment
ECB Warns Against Inflation Complacency
Concerns Over North Cyprus Casino Development
Shipping Companies Look Beyond Chinese Finance
Rural Exodus Fueling European Wildfires
China Hosts Major Security Meeting
Chinese Police Successfully Recover Family's Savings from Livestream Purchases
Germany Marks a Decade Since Migrant Wave with Divisions, Success Stories, and Political Shifts
Liverpool Defeat Arsenal 1–0 with Szoboszlai Free-Kick to Stay Top of Premier League
Prince Harry and King Charles to Meet in First Reunion After 20 Months
Chinese Stock Market Rally Fueled by Domestic Investors
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
Ukrainian Nationalist Politician Andriy Parubiy Assassinated in Lviv
Corporate America Cuts Middle Management as Bosses Take On Triple the Workload
Parents Sue OpenAI After Teen’s Death, Alleging ChatGPT Encouraged Suicide
Amazon Faces Lawsuit Over 'Buy' Label on Digital Streaming Content
Federal Reserve Independence Questioned Amid Trump’s Push to Reshape Central Bank
British Politics Faces Tumultuous Autumn After Summer of Rebellions and Rising Farage Momentum
US Appeals Court Rules Against Most Trump-Era Tariffs
UK Sought Broad Access to Apple Users’ Data, Court Filing Reveals
UK Bank Shares Dive Over Potential Tax on Sector
Germany’s Auto Industry Sheds 51,500 Jobs in First Half of 2025 Amid Deepening Crisis
Bruce Willis Relocated Due to Advanced Dementia
French and Korean Nuclear Majors Clash As EU Launches Foreign Subsidy Probe
EU Stands Firm on Digital Rules as Trump Warns of Retaliation
Getting Ready for the 3rd Time in Its History, Germany Approves Voluntary Military Service for Teenagers
Argentine President Javier Milei Evacuated After Stones Thrown During Campaign Event
Denmark Confronts U.S. Diplomat Over Covert Trump-Linked Influence in Greenland
Starmer Should Back Away from ECHR, Says Jack Straw
Trump Demands RICO Charges Against George Soros and Son for Funding Violent Protests
Taylor Swift Announces Engagement to NFL Star Travis Kelce
France May Need IMF Bailout, Warns Finance Minister
Chinese AI Chipmaker Cambricon Posts Record Profit as Beijing Pushes Pivot from Nvidia
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
Ukraine Finally Allows Young Men Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Two to Leave the Country
The Porn Remains, Privacy Disappears: How Britain Broke the Internet in Ten Days
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Welcome to The Definition of Insanity: Germany Edition
Just a reminder, this is Michael Jackson's daughter, Paris.
Spotify’s Strange Move: The Feature Nobody Asked For – Returns
Manhunt in Australia: Armed Anti-Government Suspect Kills Police Officers Sent to Arrest Him
China Launches World’s Most Powerful Neutrino Detector
How Beijing-Linked Networks Shape Elections in New York City
Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska Fled War To US, Stabbed To Death
Elon Musk Sues Apple and OpenAI Over Alleged App Store Monopoly
2 Australian Police Shot Dead In Encounter In Rural Victoria State
Vietnam Evacuates Hundreds of Thousands as Typhoon Kajiki Strikes; China’s Sanya Shuts Down
UK Government Delays Decision on China’s Proposed London Embassy Amid Concerns Over Redacted Plans
A 150-Year Tradition to Be Abolished? Uproar Over the Popular Central Park Attraction
×