An illustration depicts recovered fossil bones from a giant dinosaur recently unearthed in Argentina.

Some 70 percent of the animal's skeleton was dug up by scientists working in the arid steppes of Patagonia.

The researchers announced their discovery yesterday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

"It's among the biggest dinosaur finds and the most complete for a giant dinosaur," Alexander Kellner of Brazil's National Museum told Reuters.

"We have all vertebrae between the first of the neck to the first of the tail."

The dino's long, thick neck suggests it was a kind of titanosaur, a group of plodding plant-eaters whose fossil remains have been found throughout Patagonia.

(See related story and gallery: "Giant Dinosaur Discovered in Argentina" [July 28, 2006].)

The animal believed to be a new species, has been named Futalognkosaurus dukei. The first name comes from the indigenous Mapuche language meaning "giant chief of the lizards," and the second refers to Duke Energy Corporation, which partially funded the excavation.

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