Overview
- The German–Argentine team, which published its study Thursday in PeerJ, describes an adult plant‑eating sauropod about 20 meters long that lived roughly 155 million years ago.
- Shepherd Dionide Mesa first spotted the bones on his farm in Chubut, Argentina, and the type specimen is now curated at the Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio in Trelew.
- Excavations recovered more than 30 neck, back, and tail vertebrae plus several ribs and a pelvic fragment from the Late Jurassic Cañadón Calcáreo Formation.
- The skeleton shows a mix of features seen in brachiosaurids and diplodocoids, and the authors’ analyses point to brachiosaurid ties that could mark South America’s first Jurassic examples of that group.
- Researchers say the Patagonian material widens the known range of giant sauropods on the southern continents and provides key comparison points long missing outside classic Northern Hemisphere sites and Tanzania.