Nullotitan

Nullotitan was a large sauropod dinosaur that lived in southern Patagonia during the final stage of the Late Cretaceous period. Discovered in Santa Cruz Province in Argentina, it was named in honour of the geologist who first located its fossil site decades before formal excavation. The known specimen includes neck, back, and tail vertebrae, as well as limb elements such as a complete femur. Reaching roughly twenty to twenty-five metres in length, it was an imposing herbivore capable of browsing across diverse vegetation strata. It shared its temperate, forested floodplain habitat with predatory megaraptorids, medium-sized ornithopods, and early mammals. Nullotitan represents one of the southernmost colossal sauropods documented right up to the end-Cretaceous extinction event, demonstrating that titanosaurs thrived in high southern latitudes until the very close of the Mesozoic Era.

Its fossils were discovered in southernmost Patagonia alongside the elasmarian ornithopod Isasicursor.

Where and when

Nullotitan lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 72.1 to 66 million years ago (Maastrichtian age). Its remains come from Argentina, in the Chorrillo Formation.

The numbers

Length 23 m (estimates run from 20 to 25 m). Mass about 27 t. Hip height about 4 m. That is 13.2 human-lengths, or 2.01 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, hip height.

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