How Texas of Us To Have This Gigantic Creature With An Insanely Long Neck as a State Symbol

It's pretty well known that Texas has its state animals, plants and so many other things that it claims as symbols of the Lone Star State.

But did you know that we actually have our own state dinosaur?

Turns out we do, and the dinosaur we chose to represent the state where everything is bigger and better perfectly fits the criteria that a state dinosaur for Texas would have to meet.

Meet the Sauroposeidon proteles

The Sauroposeidon proteles was a dinosaur that lived around 110 million years ago. Considered one of the largest land animals ever to have existed, with estimates of its length ranging from 30 to 34 meters and weighing anywhere from 40 to 60 tons, this guy earned his place as the Lone Star State's state dinosaur.

Its name derives from the Greek words "sauros" meaning lizard, and "Poseidon," the Greek god of the sea, due to its immense size. Sauroposeidon is known from only a few fossilized bones found in Oklahoma, USA, making it one of the most poorly known sauropods.

Bones of the dinosaur were first discovered in 1994 in Oklahoma near the border of Texas, where at the time of its discovery were deemed too large to belong to an animal and were mistakenly believed to be tree trunks. It was later discovered that these remains were not tree trunks but were in fact, the remains of what was the largest known dinosaur of the time.

Turns out that in their time, these massive dinosaurs roamed the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, which extended out to Oklahoma in its time. Due to its sheer size, the Sauroposeidon likely had no predators.

In 2009 the Sauroposedion was voted to be the Texas state dinosaur and it has remained that way since.