Bruhathkayosaurus, holotype known as GSI PAL/SR 20, is an extinct titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur, that was previously believed to have been a carnosaurian theropod, which lived in what is now India during the Late Cretaceous, 70 million years ago. It was one of, if not, the largest known dinosaur; it likely grew to at least 30 meters (98 feet) long when fully grown. It only has one species, B. matleyi. Bruhathkayosaurus means huge-bodied lizard and matleyi honours Charles Alfred Matley, a British palaeontologist who discovered many fossils across India.
Bruhathkayosaurus was discovered in the Kallamedu Formation, which is pictured here
Bruhathkayosaurus is only known from one specimen, which consists of an ilium (hip bone), a tibia, an ilium and a vertebra. This specimen was discovered around 1978 in the Kallamedu Formation, which is located in the Tiruchirappalli district of southern India. They were subsequently described by Ayysami & Yadagiri (1987) in a paper named "A carnosaurian dinosaur from the Kallamedu Formation (Maestrichtian horizon), Tamilnadu."
Unfortunately, the fossils were preserved in a poor condition and the monsoon season of the region coupled with the sands and clays of the Kallamedu Formation caused the fossils to become extremely fragile, so when the fossils were extracted, they started to become damaged and according to Galton and Ayysami, the Bruhathkayosaurus fossils "started to disintegrate inside their field jackets before reaching the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and no longer exist". Because of this, the fossils are now permanently lost.
Before 2022, only several low quality images from c.1978 of the fossils in situ and line drawings of the fossils, and as a result of this, many palaeontologists have since doubted the validity of Bruhathkayosaurus as a genus, with some believing that the fossils were instead the remains of petrified wood and not those of a sauropod dinosaur.
In 2022, Saurabh Pal and Krishnan Ayyasami published "The lost titan of Cauvery", and in the paper they confirmed the validity of Bruhathkayosaurus as a sauropod dinosaur when they rediscovered two images of the femur shortly after discovery in c.1978 and drawings of the same femur.
Status: Permanently Lost
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