Think the Earth

It has now become apparent that the fossil, which has been stored at the London's Natural History Museum since the 1890s, is of a completely new dinosaur family.

The fossil that the Ph.D. student from the University of Portsmouth, Mike Taylor, happened to find when looking around a shelf of samples at the museum is now said to be a part of dorsal vertebra (back bone) of a dinosaur characterized by a giant body size, long neck, and a small head. It is estimated that the dinosaur lived about 140 million years ago, weighed about 7.5 tons, and was about the same size as an elephant.

The fossil was excavated near Hastings, England, 113 years ago. It has remained untouched in the museum since then, after a paleontologist took a quick look at it.

"It was unmistakably a dorsal vertebra from a sauropod, but it didn't look like any dorsal I'd ever seen before," said Mr. Taylor, who researches sauropod vertebrae in his PhD program. "It leapt out at me as being different."

The fossil was recognized as a completely new dinosaur family, and this newly discovered dinosaur has been named Xenoposeidon proneneukus.