I think most kids had a dream of digging in the dirt one day and unearthing some kind of dinosaur bone.
After all, boy or girl, big or small, dinosaurs fascinate us all, if only for a short while.
That dream came true foramateur paleontologist Damien Boschetto, while the 25yo was out for a routine amble through the trees.
He was walking his dog in southern France when he stumbled on a massive bone sticking out of the ground. It turned out to be the 32.8-foot fossil of a Titanosaur skeleton.
Just to give you a sense of the scale of a full grown Titanosaur… it can get this big.
This long-necked sauropod was thriving around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.
He talked with a local news station about the find.
“It happened one morning like any other, during an ordinary walk. While walking the dog, a landslide on the edge of the cliff exposed the bones of various skeletons.”
He soon learned that his find would astonish even jaded researchers.
“From a museography point of view, it will make it possible to present to the general public animals almost complete in anatomical positions, which is something great.”
The local Archaeological and Paleontological Cultural Association was equally delighted.
“The most exciting thing was to realize that we had at least one anatomically connected animal and that it was a titanosaur, a long-necked dinosaur.”
Experts have gone back to the “bone bed” where the fossil was found and have discovered others from similar periods as well.
Sauropods like the one Boschetto found were among the largest dinosaurs of the period, totally around 85 feet from head to tail.
While experts are still trying to determine its exact species.
For his part, Boschetto has decided to go back to school to become one of those experts himself.
This must have been like a sign from the heavens.