palaeontologist have discovered a newfangled species of long - neck , plant - use up dinosaur that roam southern Africa 200 million eld ago when it was still part of the supercontinent Gondwana . The medium - sized new mintage was a transitional form that lived before the famous , gigantic sauropods like Diplodocus and therecently revived Brontosaurus . It ’s described in theZoological Journal of the Linnean Societythis week .
The fossils were unearth in the 1930s from the Upper Triassic−Lower Jurassic Elliot Formation of South Africa about 30 kilometers from the Lesotho delimitation . However , it was only recently rediscovered among the chiliad or so fossils in theUniversity of the Witwatersrand collection . An international squad led by Alejandro Otero from Argentina’sMuseo de La Plataexamined the fogy – include multiple vertebra , most of a forelimb , and part of a hind limb – represent at least four individuals .
At first , they thought the bones belonged to a have a go at it South African dinosaur name Aardonyx , but with confining examination , it turned out to be the antecedently unknown early sauropodomorph – other members of the group that gave acclivity to the later long - neck goliath of the Mesozoic . One of its ankle finger cymbals , called the talus , was especially unique : It ’s shaped like a cross . So , they named itSefapanosaurus zastronensis , from the local Sesotho word “ sefapano ” for “ fussy . ”
The new dino helps fill in an of import spread . “ Sefapanosaurusconstitutes a extremity of the grow list of transitional sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Argentina and South Africa that are more and more telling us about how they diversified , ” Otero explains in astatement . The two continents were both part of a individual , southern hemisphere landmass at the time .
report joint author Emil Krupandan from theUniversity of Cape Townadds : “ This find indicates the grandness of relooking at honest-to-god material that has only been cursorily learn in the past , for re - assess past preconceptions about sauropodomorph multifariousness in light of new information . ”
