Patagotitan

MEANING: Patagonia giant

PERIOD: Early Cretaceous

CONTINENT: South America

South America was home to some of the largest sauropods during the Cretaceous period. Patagotitan is a massive titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur, and one of the largest animals ever to walk the earth. It may have reached up to 40 m in length, and weighed around 75 t. Like all sauropods, it was a quadrupedal herbivore with an extremely long neck.

Patagotitan is from the Early Cretaceous. The Cretaceous is the third and final geological period of the Mesozoic Era, with the Early Cretaceous making up roughly the first half, lasting from about 143 to 100 million years ago. The poles were ice-free, due to the relatively warm climate, and forests extended into high latitudes. The continued breakup of the continents created new coastlines and isolated landmasses, influencing the evolution of distinct dinosaur faunas.

It was a time of transition, as many groups of animals and plants began to take on more modern forms while others declined or disappeared. Pterosaurs continued to thrive, though early birds were becoming more diverse and widespread. Mammals remained small but adapted to a variety of ecological niches. In the oceans, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were common, and early mosasaurs began to appear.

Dinosaurs remained the dominant land animals, with groups like iguanodontians, spinosaurids, and carcharodontosaurids rising to prominence. While sauropods declined in some regions, they remained abundant in the Southern Hemisphere. The first true ceratopsians appeared, and ankylosaurs replaced stegosaurs in their niche. Dromaeosaurs and other small theropods diversified. During this time, the first flowering plants evolved, gradually changing global ecosystems by providing new food sources for herbivores.

Patagotitan is a lognkosaurian titanosaur. Lognkosaurians are a family of large-bodied titanosaurs that include some of the largest land animals known to science. This group is primarily known from South America, particularly Argentina, where many of these colossal sauropods have been discovered.

Lognkosaurians are characterized by their massive size and distinctive body proportions. They had extremely long necks with highly elongated vertebrae, wide cervical ribs, and robust, barrel-shaped torsos. These features suggest adaptations for supporting a horizontally extensive feeding range, possibly allowing them to graze or browse across large swaths of vegetation without needing to move their entire bodies frequently.

They arose at the end of the Early Cretaceous and lived primarily through the Late Cretaceous, a period when titanosaurs were the dominant sauropods in the Southern Hemisphere. While other sauropod lineages had declined or disappeared in many parts of the world, lognkosaurians continued to thrive, representing a highly specialized and extreme branch of titanosaur evolution.