Paris: The thigh bone of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French paleontologists at an excavation site in southwestern France where remains of some of the largest animals that ever lived on land have been dug up since 2010.

The two-meter long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.

"This is a major discovery," Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at the National History Museum of Paris told Reuters. "I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur."

"These are animals that probably weighed 40 to 50 tonnes."

Allain said scientists at the site near the city of Cognac have found more than 7,500 fossils of more than 40 different species since 2010, making it one of the largest such finds in Europe.