Japanese scientists said Tuesday they have created a new element that is heavier than any known element, the most significant in the field since the heaviest known element was discovered in Germany in 1996.

If confirmed, the new element, whose atomic number is 113, will be the first manmade element created by Japanese, according to Kosuke Morita and his team at Japan's physical and chemical research institute.

The team would have the right to name the superheavy element in the periodic table, and "japonium" is a candidate name, Morita said.

The heaviest element existing in nature is uranium whose atomic number is 92. All heavier elements have been produced artificially by scientists and numbered according to how many protons are in their nuclei. From 1940 to 1996, elements numbered up to 112 were created.

Russian scientists said in February they had created elements 113 and 115, but the discovery remains to be confirmed internationally.

The Japanese team has long tried to create element 113 by using a cyclotron to bombard the atoms of bismuth, numbered 83, with those of zinc, numbered 30.

On July 23 after the cyclotron bombarded a bismuth atom target with 2.5 trillion zinc atoms per second for 80 days, the scientist said, the team found the new element, which disintegrated in only 0.3 millisecond.

The element's atomic mass number is 278, meaning its nucleus has 113 protons and 165 neutrons, he added.