Giant dinosaurs may have hunted in packs

NEW YORK – Scientists are learning more about what appears to be one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs known, a two-legged beast whose bones were found several years ago in the fossil-rich Patagonia region of Argentina.

One expert called the discovery the first substantial evidence of group living by large meat-eaters other than tyrannosaurs like T. rex.

The creature, which apparently measured more than 40 feet long, is called Mapusaurus roseae.

The discovery of Mapusaurus included bones from at least seven to nine of the beasts, suggesting the previously unknown animal may have lived and hunted in groups. That hunting strategy might have allowed it to attack even bigger beasts, huge plant-eating dinosaurs.

The find is described in the latest issue of the journal Geodiversitas by paleontologists Rodolfo Coria of the Carmen Funes Museum in Plaza Huincul, Argentina, and Philip Currie of the University of Alberta in Canada. They oversaw the excavation of the dinosaurs’ remains from 1997 to 2001.

Currie said in an e-mail that it’s hard to say how long the biggest specimen was because no complete skeleton was found. He estimated it may have measured about 41 feet from the snout to the tip of the tail.