Paralititan

Paralititan (meaning "tidal giant"[1]) was a giant titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur genus discovered in coastal deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt. It lived between 99.6 and 93.5 million years ago.[2]

Joshua Smith, who informally led the research team that found the dinosaur fossils, told an interviewer, "It was a truly enormous dinosaur by any reckoning."[3]

Little of Paralititan is known, so its exact size is difficult to estimate. However, the limited material, especially the long humeri, suggested that it is one of the most massive dinosaurs ever discovered, with an estimated weight of 59 t (65 short tons).[4] The complete right humerus measured 1.69 meters (5.54 ft) long which at the time of discovery was the longest known in a Cretaceous sauropod; this was surpassed in 2016 with the discovery of Notocolossus which had a 1.76 m (5 ft 9 in) humerus.[5] Using Saltasaurus as a guide, Carpenter estimated its length at around 26 m (85 ft).[6] Scott Hartman estimates an animal that is massive, but still smaller than the biggest titanosaurs such as Puertasaurus, Alamosaurus, and Argentinosaurus.[7] In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated the length at twenty metres, the weight at twenty tonnes.[8]

From the formation another sauropod had already been known, Aegyptosaurus. Paralititan differs from Aegyptosaurus in its larger size, the latter genus weighing only fifteen tons, possibly in not having pleurocoels in its front tail vertebrae, and in possessing a relatively longer deltopectoral crest on its humerus.[1]