In 2016, someone walking past a drying pond in Thailand noticed a few strange rocks. Ten years later, those ‘rocks’ turned out to be a 27-metre, 27-tonne dinosaur, the largest ever found in Southeast Asia

A village pond in north-eastern Thailand shrank in the 2016 dry season and handed over a 27-tonne secret. Almost a decade later they finally have a name: Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, described in a paper published in Scientific Reports in May 2026 and now the largest dinosaur ever identified in Southeast Asia. Titan comes from Greek mythology, and turns up in sauropod names roughly as often as rain turns up in Isaan. Why they call it the last titanSethapanichsakul calls it “the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in Southeast Asia.” Southeast Asia already had two euhelopodids, Phuwiangosaurus from Thailand and Tangvayosaurus from Laos, usually recovered as close relatives and read as a cosy local lineage.