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dinosaur

New Dinosaur Species Discovered in Thailand Is Largest Ever Found in Southeast Asia

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A gigantic new dinosaur species discovered in Thailand is giving paleontologists a clearer picture of prehistoric life in Southeast Asia and setting a new regional size record in the process.

Scientists have identified the dinosaur as Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, an enormous long-necked herbivore that roamed the region roughly 100 million to 120 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous period. According to researchers, the dinosaur measured nearly 89 feet long and weighed an estimated 27 metric tons, making it the largest dinosaur ever found in Southeast Asia.

The findings were published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports by a team from Thailand and the United Kingdom.

The species belonged to the sauropods, a group of massive plant-eating dinosaurs recognized for their towering necks, heavy bodies and pillar-like limbs. Famous members of the group include Brontosaurus and Diplodocus, both among the largest land animals known to have existed.

“One of the many features that we’re kind of excited about is the size of this dinosaur,” lead author Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a paleontologist and Ph.D. student at University College London, told NPR.

While enormous, Sethapanichsakul said the species falls within the “upper middle” range of the largest dinosaurs ever discovered, offering researchers insight into a key moment in sauropod evolution before truly colossal species emerged later in the Cretaceous period.

“It gives us an understanding of the potential kind of evolutionary trends that are beginning to occur” around this time, he said.

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Researchers have identified even larger sauropods from later Cretaceous periods, including some estimated to weigh as much as 70 tons.

“In the Middle Cretaceous, we find dinosaurs in China, South America and probably Africa that are super giants. They are the biggest of the biggest. The new discovery essentially represents that kind of on-ramp towards that kind of supersizing.”

One fossil immediately stood out: a humerus, or upper arm bone, measuring nearly six feet long.

“When I first laid eyes on the humerus, it was taller than me, and that was quite surprising,” Sethapanichsakul told CNN. The paleontologist added that fossils of such scale are extremely uncommon in Thailand.

The dinosaur’s remains were first uncovered after a local resident spotted bones near a communal pond in northeastern Thailand during a 2016 drought, when lower water levels exposed the fossils. Excavations continued over several years, with teams conducting fieldwork from 2016 to 2019 before returning in 2024 for additional digs.

Recovered fossils included portions of the spine, ribs, pelvis and limb bones. Scientists later created 3D scans of the remains and determined the animal represented a previously unknown species.

Its name draws from both mythology and geography. “Naga” refers to serpent-like beings in South and Southeast Asian folklore, while “Titan” nods to the gigantic figures of Greek mythology.

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“The Nagas are also often associated with water, and considering the dinosaur was found on the side of a communal pond, it just seemed very apt to have a serpent giant be the name.”

The final part of the species name honors Chaiyaphum province, where the fossils were discovered.

For Sethapanichsakul, who is originally from Thailand, the discovery also carried personal significance.

“It fulfills a kind of childhood promise. That, yeah, I’m going to name a dinosaur one day. And I want it to be from Thailand.”

Researchers believe Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis lived in a hot, relatively arid landscape crisscrossed by river systems. The environment would have supported a wide variety of ancient wildlife, including crocodiles, turtles, freshwater sharks and fish.

The dinosaur also likely shared its habitat with smaller herbivorous dinosaurs related to Iguanodon as well as “a kind of very early form of what we would call Ceratopsians, cousins of Triceratops,” Sethapanichsakul said.

He added that Thailand may hold one of the richest dinosaur fossil records in Asia because of its extensive layers of exposed Mesozoic Era sedimentary rock, dating to around 252 million to 66 million years ago.

“These rocks are exposed to less rain and vegetation, which could end up eroding or destroying those bones,” he said.

The discovery site now hosts a research center dedicated to further paleontological work, and scientists continue to study sauropods across Southeast Asia.

A life-sized reconstruction of the dinosaur is currently displayed at the Thainosaur Museum in Bangkok.

fossil

Dinosaur Fossils Discovered In Hong Kong For The First Time In History

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Hong Kong’s government made a historic and exciting announcement this week. For the first time in history, Dinosaur fossils were found in the special administrative region of China on a remote island in the financial center’s countryside. 

The fossils were discovered on Port Island, which is an uninhabitable area of rocks in the northeastern waters of the city, which is near Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries, and Conservation Department back in March. 

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Researchers involved in the discovery determined that the fossils likely originated from a large aged dinosaur during the Cretaceous period, which followed the Jurassic period and took place more than 145 million to 66 million years ago. 

“The discovery is of great significance and provides new evidence for research on palaeoecology in Hong Kong,” Secretary of Development in Hong Kong Bernadette Linn said in a statement.

Port Island has been a designated location for scientific research and interest since 1979. It’s a part of Hong Kong’s UNESCO Global Geopark, which is classified as a cluster of islands. The Geopark is protected by an international framework, and has been utilized as an educational tool. 

“Further studies will have to be conducted to confirm the species of the dinosaur. Port Island and the wider country park will be closed for further excavations and research. The dinosaur fossils will also be on public display at Hong Kong’s Heritage Discovery Center [starting this week],”  officials said.

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Experts in paleontology in Hong Kong have stated that this is a landmark discovery that’s a big deal for the area. Hong Kong is already known as a city with a complex geological history, as well as changing weather patterns. 

“The only way we can find dinosaur fossils is if there is a bit on the surface that we can see. The remains may have fully eroded if researchers arrived later,” Michael Pittman, an assistant professor of life sciences at the Chinese University of Hong Kong told CNN. 

“The only dinosaur-era things Hong Kong has found so far are plants and fish,” he said.

For the region, the discovery of fossils from an organism’s body is rare. Beyond Hong Kong, skeletal remains have not typically been found in southern China. 

“If they end up finding a whole skeleton of a big dinosaur or two dinosaurs, they might have to go back next summer, and the summer after that,” Pittman said.

Asteroids kill dinosaurs

New Study Says an Asteroid, Not Volcanic Activity, Killed the Dinosaurs

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For decades, scientists have argued about what caused the global mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. While there is general consensus that climate change is to blame, scientists disagree over what event occurred that triggered a rapid transformation of the planet’s weather systems. Though some believe that the environmental impact was caused by massive volcanic eruptions in India, most scientists think that an asteroid impact is to blame. Now, a new research paper published in Science is hoped to end the debate, as the researchers found that the volcanic eruptions occurred too far before the extinction event that took place 66 million years ago to have been its cause.

With this research, the scientists are hoping to put to rest the theory that K-Pg, which is the scientific notation for the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, was caused by volcanic activity. According to Yale assistant professor of geology & geophysics Pincelli Hull, who helped author the research paper, “a lot of people have speculated that volcanoes mattered to K-Pg, and we’re saying, ‘No, they didn’t.’” 

 

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According to Hill, “volcanic activity in the late Cretaceous caused a gradual global warming event of about two degrees, but not mass extinction.” In other words, although climate change caused by volcanic activity had an impact on the global ecosystem, it was not rapid or dramatic enough of a warming event to cause the extinction of 75% of life on Earth, as is observed in K-Pg. The study also offers an answer to a question that has for years remained a mystery, which is why massive eruptions that took place in India in the immediate aftermath of the extinction event did not cause a corresponding warming event. According to this study, the ocean absorbed an enormous amount of CO2 in the aftermath of the asteroid impact, which may have hid the warming effect of the volcanic activity.

The asteroid impact which is now widely believed to have been the cause of K-Pg was first discovered in 1990, after samples from the Chicxulub crater in Mexico were analyzed by scientists who determined that the crater was caused by an asteroid impact that took place around 66 million years ago, at precisely the same time as the extinction event. Since the discovery of the crater, further research has produced evidence that this in fact was the impact site of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. In 2016, for instance, a drilling project drilled into the impact crater, obtaining rock core samples that seemed to confirm the theory, as materials extracted from the impact site match the geological record across the world that was formed in the wake of the asteroid impact.