Bones Reveal The Brontosaurus Had An Older, Massive Cousin In South Africa.

[Cattledog]

Millions of years before the brontosaurus roamed the Earth, a massive relative was lumbering around South Africa.

Scientists think this early Jurassic dinosaur was, at the time, the largest land creature ever to have lived. And unlike the even bigger creatures that came later, they think it could pop up on its hind legs.

They've dubbed the newly discovered dinosaur Ledumahadi mafube, which translates in the Sesotho language to "a giant thunderclap at dawn." And the discovery sheds light on how giants like the brontosaurus got so huge.

The discovery didn't happen quickly — it took years to get this dinosaur out of the ground. "It's quite a long, sort of drawn-out story. It starts, I think, around 1990," says Universidade de São Paulo paleontologist Blair McPhee, one of the researchers who discovered the dinosaur.

McPhee says a few huge bones were discovered near South Africa's border with Lesotho during a construction project. They were brought to the University of the Witwatersrand, where they sat for more than a decade.

Years later, a scientist stumbled upon more bones sticking out of rock in the same area. A team spent four or five years painstakingly excavating them.

"It took a long time because the sediment they were encased in had basically turned to concrete over about 200 million years, and it was sort of on a slight cliff face," McPhee says.

Tests showed these bones matched the ones discovered in the '90s. And what was immediately clear was that this creature was enormous. It would have weighed in at around 12 tons.

As McPhee put it, they think it had "about twice the volume of an African elephant."

Around the time the creature roamed, dinosaurs were thought to be smaller. "I was really surprised that they found a dinosaur this big, this old," says Adelphi University assistant biology professor Michael D'Emic, who specializes in the evolution of dinosaur growth and was not involved in the research.

And there was something else that was surprising.

The researchers think this dinosaur evolved from a smaller ancestor that walked on two legs. And it's likely an early cousin of even larger animals like the brontosaurus, a type of herbivore called a sauropod that lumbered around on four legs.

McPhee says this is a transitional dinosaur.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/27/652121006/bones-reveal-the-brontosaurus-had-an-older-massive-cousin-in-south-africa?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180927

[at140]

1. Climate change killed those massive animals off!

either global warming or ice age could have made them extinct. Because they had no enemies who could kill them.

[Bayard]

2. Amazing

Hope it didn't have to live off trees like those in the picture though!

Thanks for posting.