Field Museum scientists assemble Maximo, largest dinosaur discovered to date

CHICAGO -- Over the course of just four days, scientists assembled a cast of the biggest dinosaur discovered to date.

The cast assembled at Chicago's Field Museum, named Maximo, is 122 feet across and stands 38 feet tall at the head. Maximo is a member of the species Patagotitan mayorum, a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived over 100 million years ago in what is now Patagonia, Argentina. The cast takes up a third of the museum's main hall.

Maximo is modeled from the fossil bones of seven individual dinosaurs of the same species that were excavated from a quarry.

"Our goal as an institution is to offer visitors the best possible dinosaur experiences, and we want that to start right when visitors first enter Stanley Field Hall," Field Museum president Richard Lariviere said in a news release. "The new titanosaur is huge and it looks amazing in Stanley Field Hall. It is the perfect home to display the world's largest dinosaur."