Huge dinosaur discovered in back garden!

Palaeontologists were shocked to find the skeleton largely intact

Imagine finding what could be Europe's biggest dinosaur buried in your back garden?! Well that's what happened to this family!

This enormous dinosaur skeleton was discovered in a garden in Pompal, in Portugal in 2017, by a man who was doing some building work on his house.

Fast forward to 2022, and a group of palaeontologists from Portugal and Spain have begun excavating the dinosaur fossil, which they think is a sauropod.

Sauropods were the biggest creatures to ever walk the Earth. They lived around 150 million years ago and had long necks and tails, living on a diet of plants.

Work is under way to uncover more of the dinosaur

From looking at the size of the dinosaur's rib and spine bones, the palaeontologists think the dinosaur could have been around 12 metres tall and 25 metres long - that's longer than two double-decker buses!

Elisabete Malafaia, researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, told the Phys.org website:

"It is not usual to find all the ribs of an animal like this, let alone in this position, maintaining their original anatomical position."

The skeleton is now being studied by an international team of researchers, and palaeontologists are hopeful that they will find even more bones as they keep digging.