A 25-metre fossilised dinosaur skeleton was the last thing a Portugal man expected to uncover in his own backyard in 2017, but now researchers believe he may have stumbled upon the largest of its kind in Europe.
While carrying out construction five years ago, the owner of a property in Pombal, Portugal noticed several fragments of fossilised bones in his yard.
Earlier this month, a team of palaeontologists from Portugal and Spain spent ten days at the Monte Agudo palaeontological site in Pombal.
They say they have unearthed the vertebrae and ribs of a possible brachiosaurid sauropod that would have stood approximately 12 metres tall and 25 metres long.
Sauropods are known as the largest land animal to have ever lived.
The researchers believe the skeleton could be that of the largest sauropod dinosaur to be discovered in Europe.
The skeleton was found in a position that the researchers believe it died in.
"It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position," Elisabete Malafaia, a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, told Phys.org.
"This mode of preservation is relatively uncommon in the fossil record of dinosaurs, in particular sauropods, from the Portuguese Upper Jurassic."
The palaeontologists say they are hopeful that there is more of the skeleton yet to uncover.
