The first dinosaur bone to be discovered from Antarctica has been found in a drawer. After being first found in 1985, the bone was left after the team that discovered it was unsure of what it was. Now, 40 years on, palaeontologists have found that the fossil is a tail bone of a type of dinosaur called a Titanosaur.
As the name suggests, these were the largest dinosaurs to have walked the Earth. It may seem like a pretty rough place for a dinosaur to live, but millions of years ago, the Titanosaur would have found Antarctica to be full of green. Back then, the region would have been covered in thick forests.
Professor Paul Barrett from the Natural History Museum confirmed what the fossil was. "Although it's not too much to look at, it actually has a really distinctive shape. As soon as I saw it, I knew what we were dealing with... it was a dead cert we were dealing with a Titanosaur. This is a combination of features that's completely unique to these types of dinosaurs," he told the BBC.
The scientists studying the fossil estimate that it was around 7 metres in length. Quite small for a Titanosaur, but Barrett believes it was a juvenile dinosaur, or perhaps just a smaller variation of the dinosaur. More than 100 types of Titanosaur have been discovered, but we're willing to bet very few have been left in a drawer for more than 40 years.
A tianosaur skeleton, currently located in Chicago, IL.
