Huge dinosaur skeleton unearthed in Portuguese garden – BBC News – BBC News

No one thinks a significant scientific discovery could be made from their own backyard. But for this Portuguese man, this unlikely fantasy actually came true.

A man discovered fragments of fossilized bones in his yard, and contacted a research team. They launched an excavation campaign, and believe they have found the largest sauropod dinosaur to ever be found in Europe.

Researchers found fragments of fossilized bone in a back garden in Pombal, Portugal, earlier this month. If the bones do belong to a brachiosaurid sauropod, that means they belonged to the largest land animals ever to have lived.

The dinosaur possibly belongs to the Brachiosauridae group, and the excavation campaign revealed an “important set of elements of the axial skeleton”, according to the research team.

Based on the skeleton that was found, researchers believe that discovery suggests that a sauropod dinosaur lived in the area. The skeleton was found in Upper Jurassic sedimentary rocks, suggesting it is about 150m years old.

They found the ribs of this sauropod, preserved in their original anatomical position. A postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lisbon said the preserved ribs of a brachiosaurid sauropod, or brachiosaurus, are the largest ribs of a sauropod that are currently known in Europe and one of the largest that was described worldwide.