Massive dinosaur replica takes over from London's beloved 'Dippy'

A cast of one of the largest dinosaurs ever to stride the earth, makes its debut at London's Natural History museum, the first time it has been seen in Europe since the original was discovered in Patagonia. At 37.2 metres long, the titanosaur named Patagotitanmayorum only just fits into the exhibition hall at London's Natural History Museum.

Patagotitan will be a welcome replacement for the museum's longtime dinosaur attraction, the popular Diplodocus "Dippy" replica which was on display until 2017. With its neck extended upwards, it would have been tall enough to poke its head into a five-storey building, according to researchers.

Paul Barrett, Natural History Museum said "This is one of the largest animals that's ever walked the earth. So it really pushes the limits of what a giant animal can do on land. And with this exhibition, we wanted to explore how those really large animals could actually push flesh and bone to create these giant bodies, and what that means for their biology, and also what it means for large living animals today." 

The new cast is a replica of one of six titanosaurs found after a farmer in the Argentinian region spotted a giant thigh bone sticking out of the earth in 2010, leading to excavations over a number of years. The titanosaurs lived in the forests of modern-day Patagonia 100 to 95 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period.