Titanosaurs, the last and largest sauropods
After other sauropods fade, one lineage keeps growing — to seventy tonnes and beyond.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 24 million years
- Known to
- ± 5 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
Titanosaurs are the only sauropod group to survive to the end of the Cretaceous, and they do so on every continent including Antarctica. They include the largest land animals ever measured — Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan and Dreadnoughtus among them — some plausibly exceeding sixty tonnes. Their nesting grounds at Auca Mahuevo in Patagonia preserve thousands of eggs with embryonic skin impressions, showing that the giants began life small enough to hold in a hand and grew several orders of magnitude in a couple of decades.