The 98-million-year-old skeleton of a giant dinosaur that was one of the largest creatures to ever live on Earth.

Paleontologists discovered the fossil of a тιтanosaur in the Neuquén province of Patagonia in northeastern Argentina, located in a thick layer of sediment called the Candeleros Formation. The 24 vertebrae of the tail, parts of the pelvis and pelvic girdle are believed to belong to a тιтanosaur belonging to the sauropod dinosaur group, characterized by its large size, long neck and tail, and standing on four legs.

In a study published in the journal Cretaceous Research, experts say it is one of the largest sauropods ever found, surpᴀssing Patagoтιтan, a dinosaur that lived 95 to 100 million years ago and measured 37.2 meters (120 feet) long. “It’s a giant dinosaur, but we hope to unearth more bones in future field trips to confirm how big it was,” said Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist at the La Plata Museum in Argentina.

тιтanosaur fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica, but those larger than 40 tons have mostly been found in Patagonia. Without analyzing the dinosaur’s arm or thigh bones, experts can’t estimate how much it weighed. However, with the partial skeleton found, they conclude that the specimen is among the largest, with a body mᴀss comparable to or larger than Patagoтιтan or Argentinosaurus.

The Patagoтιтan dinosaur may have been the largest land animal on the planet, weighing 77 tons, while the Argentinosaurus was equally large, measuring 40 meters long and weighing 110 tons, more than 12 times the size of an African elephant (9 tons). Experts say the specimen shows that large тιтanosaurs existed alongside medium-sized and small-sized species during the late Cretaceous period, 101 million years ago.