This handout picture released on September 26, by the Dinopolis Foundation, shows the fossiled thigh bone of a dinosaur that is almost two metres (more than six feet) in length, the longest such bone ever discovered in Europe in Teruel.
Palaeontologists in Spain have found the fossiled thigh bone of a dinosaur that is almost two metres in length, the longest such femur ever discovered in Europe, they said Friday.
The Dinopolis Foundation, a dinosaur research institute, said the 1.92-metre (6.3-feet) bone was found earlier this year at a site at Riodeva near Teruel in eastern Spain along with a 1.25-metre (4.1-feet) tibia and 15 vertebrae.
The bone is believed to belong to a giant long-necked dinosaur weighing more than 40 tonnes and measuring 30 metres (98 feet), the Turiasaurus Riodevensis, first discovered in 2004 at the same site, it said in a statement.
The new fossils, in addition to those gathered in 2004, should allow the foundation to construct a skeleton of the animal, which lived some 145 million years ago, Dinopolis said.
The announcement comes two weeks after palaeontologists revealed the discovery in the same region of a new type of dinosaur with a hump that they believe is the forerunner of flesh-eating leviathans which once ruled the planet.
The fossil was uncovered in the Las Hoyas formation in central Spain's Cuenca province, a treasure trove of finds that date to the Lower Cretaceous period of between 120 and 150 million years ago.
(c) 2010 AFP
