Bones belong to largest dinosaur ever found in Australia

Bones discovered in Australia 15 years ago belong to the largest dinosaur ever found in the country, Australian officials announced.

Queensland Museum's Scott Hocknull said on Monday that he estimated the dinosaur, named Cooper, to measure nearly 30 meters long and weigh more than 60 tons.

"I equate it to something like 1,400 red kangaroos, something ridiculous like that, huge, huge animal," he said.

Tourists gathered in Eromanga to see the dinosaur bones on display at the museum.

Hocknull said it is the first time researchers can verify that Cooper, short for Australotitan Cooperensis, is in fact Australia's largest dinosaur.

He added that the research is a long process of preparing  the fossils and comparing them to other species of dinosaurs from around the world.

The bones were found by Robyn Mackenzie and her husband Stuart while they were mustering cattle on their property near the south western Queensland state town of Eromanga in 2006.

"It wouldn't have entered our mind that we were about to deal with an animal that was the largest in Australia and one of the largest in the world, so that was not even in our thinking," she said.