Spanish scientists have discovered remains of the biggest dinosaur known in Europe so far, which weighed as much as eight elephants and would not have fitted onto a basketball court.The research results are published in the latest issue of the magazine Science.

The dinosaur, whose fossils were found in Riodeva in eastern Teruel province, has been named Turiasaurus riodevensis.The species, which lived in the Late Jurassic period about 150 million years ago, measured 30 metres and weighed between 40 and 48 tons.

Other well-known sauropods include apatosaurus (formerly known as brontosaurus), brachiosaurus and diplodocus. This one was emblematic of a previously unrecognised branch of European sauropod evolution, the scientists said. Sauropods are the largest land animals in history.

“This discovery is the dream of a paleontologist,” said Luis Alcala of Fundacion Conjunto Paleontologico de Teruel-Dinopolis in Teruel, Spain.

Dr Alcala and his colleagues Rafael Royo-Torres and Alberto Cobos describe turiasaurus in the journal Science.

The dinosaur came from a time right at the boundary between the latter two eras of the age of dinosaurs, the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Relatively little has been known about European dinosaurs dating from then.

Scientists believe turiasaurus spent its days eating plants in an area close to the shoreline of the ancient Tethys Sea, forerunner of the Mediterranean Sea.

The first bones were found by Dr Cobos and Dr Royo-Torres in an abandoned wheatfield near the village of Riodeva, north-eastern Spain, in May 2003, Dr Alcala said. He said Turiasaurus weighed between 40 tonnes and 48 tonnes and was between 36 metres and 38 metres long - longer than a basketball court. By comparison, Tyrannosaurus rex was about 13.7 metres and six tonnes.

The humerus, the bone in the front leg that extends from shoulder to elbow, was as big as a full-grown man.

Turiasaurus rivals the size of the largest known dinosaurs, all sauropods, and its remains were more complete than those of many of them. These include the African giant paralititan, seismosaurus in North America and argentinosaurus and puertasaurus in South America.

Thomas Holtz, a dinosaur expert at the University of Maryland, said: “It’s a tremendously large animal, not quite to the scale of the ‘land whales’ - things like Argentinosaurus and Puertasaurus or Sauroposeidon - but it’s pretty darned big. This is the first real super-giant from Europe.”

Other fossils found at the site indicated Turiasaurus lived alongside other dinosaurs, including biped meat eaters, other sauropods and plant eaters similar to the armoured Stegosaurus, as well as turtles and crocodile-like reptiles.

The researchers said turiasaurus was more primitive from an evolutionary perspective than other known giant sauropods.

The team found 70 pieces of the fossilised remains representing about a quarter of its skeleton, including fragments of the skull, leg, back, toes, ribs, shoulder and teeth.

Such large dinosaurs have previously been found mainly in the Americas and Africa. The Turiasaurus had more primitive limb and bone structures than those of species discovered on other continents. - Sapa-dpa