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The first giant dinosaurs: a large sauropod from the Late Triassic of Thailand

Eric BUFFETAUT, Varavudh SUTEETHORN, Jean LE LOEUFF, Gilles CUNY, Haiyan TONG & Sasidhorn KHANSUBHA

en Comptes Rendus Palevol 1 (2) - Pages 103-109

Published on 31 March 2002

Newly discovered sauropod material from the Upper Triassic of northeastern Thailand reveals that some of the earliest sauropods had already reached a very large size. A 1 m long humerus is within the size range of large Jurassic sauropods such as Camarasaurus and suggests an animal reaching a length of 12 to 15 m. It took sauropodomorph dinosaurs some 20 million years to produce giant forms, a rapid size increase when compared with that observed in the evolution of other dinosaurs, such as ornithischians.


Keywords:

Thailand, Upper Triassic, Dinosauria, Sauropoda, giantism

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