Overview
- Researchers formally described Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis on Thursday in Scientific Reports, identifying a 27‑meter, 25–28‑ton sauropod as the region’s largest known dinosaur.
- Fossils from a pond edge in Chaiyaphum Province were first spotted by a local resident in 2016, yielding spine, rib, pelvis and limb bones including a 1.78‑meter humerus, with excavations completed in 2024.
- Phylogenetic tests place the species within Euhelopodidae, an Asia‑only subgroup of somphospondylan titanosauriforms, expanding evidence of diverse giant plant‑eaters in the mid‑Cretaceous of the region.
- The team calls it Thailand’s “last titan” because it comes from the country’s youngest dinosaur‑bearing rocks in the Khok Kruat Formation, after which the area turned into a shallow sea unlikely to preserve more large sauropods.
- The project combined Thai–UCL collaboration, National Geographic funding and 3D scanning, and a life‑size reconstruction now on display in Bangkok is drawing public interest that could accelerate future fossil studies.