{"id":670937,"date":"2026-05-14T18:41:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670937\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T18:41:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:41:14","slug":"giant-new-dinosaur-identified-from-fossils-in-thailand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/670937\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant new dinosaur identified from fossils in Thailand"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new type of giant long-necked dinosaur has been identified by scientists from remains dug up in Thailand.<\/p>\n

The nagatitan, the largest-ever dinosaur found in South-East Asia, weighed 27 tonnes – as much as nine adult Asian elephants – and measured 27m (88ft) in length, longer than a diplodocus. Like that dinosaur, it belonged to the sauropod family of long-necked herbivores.<\/p>\n

A team of researchers from the UK and Thailand identified the species from fossils found beside a pond in north-eastern Thailand a decade ago.<\/p>\n

They say the discovery sheds light on how changes in ancient climatic conditions allowed gigantic dinosaurs to develop.<\/p>\n

The dinosaur’s full name is Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, with “naga” referring to a serpent in South-East Asian folklore, “titan” referring to the gods in Greek mythology, and chaiyaphumensis meaning “from Chaiyaphum”, the province where the fossils were discovered.<\/p>\n

It lived between 100 and 120 million years ago – around 40 million years earlier than the tyrannosaurus rex – and is about twice the size of that creature.<\/p>\n

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, a Thai doctoral student at University College London (UCL), was the lead author of the study which was published in the Scientific Reports journal.<\/p>\n

He said the researchers referred to the nagatitan as “the last titan” of Thailand, because the fossils were found in the country’s youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation.<\/p>\n

“Younger rocks laid down towards the end of the time of the dinosaurs are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains because the region by then had become a shallow sea. So this may be the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in South-East Asia,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Researcher<\/p>\n

Researcher Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul posed with a front leg bone of the nagatitan [Reuters]<\/p>\n

Sethapanichsakul, a self-confessed “dinosaur kid”, said in a UCL press release that the study also “fulfils a childhood promise of naming a dinosaur”.<\/p>\n

The nagatitan is the 14th dinosaur to be named in Thailand. Palaeontologist Dr Sita Manitkoon, from Mahasarakham University, said that the country has a high diversity in dinosaur fossils and is “possibly the third most abundant in Asia in terms of dinosaur remains”.<\/p>\n

The nagatitan roamed Earth when the planet’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were rising in line with high global temperatures.<\/p>\n

The study’s co-author, UCL’s Prof Paul Upchurch, said the sauropod family of dinosaurs had become quite large at this time, telling National Geographic: “It seems a little odd that sauropods were able to cope with higher temperature conditions”, as large bodies retain heat and are harder to cool down.<\/p>\n

He told the Reuters news agency that it was “likely that the high temperatures had an impact on the plant fodder \u200bthat was important to sauropods, which were very large-bodied herbivores”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new type of giant long-necked dinosaur has been identified by scientists from remains dug up in Thailand.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,323777,323780,323778,323779,128,39381,3725,323781,39972,69251],"class_list":["post-670937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dinosaur-fossils","tag-dinosaur-kid","tag-dinosaur-remains","tag-sauropod-family","tag-science","tag-south-east-asia","tag-thailand","tag-thitiwoot-sethapanichsakul","tag-tyrannosaurus-rex","tag-university-college-london"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}