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A team of international scientists, led by University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) palaeontologist Professor Jonah Choiniere, described the new species in the journal Current Biology today.
The dinosaur's name is Sesotho for "a giant thunderclap at dawn" (Sesotho is one of South Africa's 11 official languages and an indigenous language in the area where the dinosaur was found).
"The name reflects the great size of the animal as well as the fact that its lineage appeared at the origins of sauropod dinosaurs," said Choiniere. "It honours both the recent and ancient heritage of southern Africa."
Ledumahadi mafube is one of the closest relatives of sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods, weighing up to 60 tonnes, include well-known species like Brontosaurus. All sauropods ate plants and stood on four legs, with a posture like modern elephants. Ledumahadi evolved its giant size independently from sauropods, and although it stood on four legs, its forelimbs would have been more crouched. This caused the scientific team to consider Ledumahadi an evolutionary "experiment" with giant body size.
Ledumahadi's fossil tells a fascinating story not only of its individual life history, but also the geographic history of where it lived, and of the evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs.
"The first thing that struck me about this animal is the incredible robustness of the limb bones," says lead author, Dr Blair McPhee. "It was of similar size to the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, but whereas the arms and legs of those animals are typically quite slender, Ledumahadi's are incredibly thick. To me this indicated that the path towards gigantism in sauropodomorphs was far from straightforward, and that the way that these animals solved the usual problems of life, such as eating and moving, was much more dynamic within the group than previously thought."
Ledumahadi mafube: South Africa's new jurassic giant
This is pretty cool.
The dinosaur's name is Sesotho for "a giant thunderclap at dawn" (Sesotho is one of South Africa's 11 official languages and an indigenous language in the area where the dinosaur was found).
"The name reflects the great size of the animal as well as the fact that its lineage appeared at the origins of sauropod dinosaurs," said Choiniere. "It honours both the recent and ancient heritage of southern Africa."
Ledumahadi mafube is one of the closest relatives of sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods, weighing up to 60 tonnes, include well-known species like Brontosaurus. All sauropods ate plants and stood on four legs, with a posture like modern elephants. Ledumahadi evolved its giant size independently from sauropods, and although it stood on four legs, its forelimbs would have been more crouched. This caused the scientific team to consider Ledumahadi an evolutionary "experiment" with giant body size.
Ledumahadi's fossil tells a fascinating story not only of its individual life history, but also the geographic history of where it lived, and of the evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs.
"The first thing that struck me about this animal is the incredible robustness of the limb bones," says lead author, Dr Blair McPhee. "It was of similar size to the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, but whereas the arms and legs of those animals are typically quite slender, Ledumahadi's are incredibly thick. To me this indicated that the path towards gigantism in sauropodomorphs was far from straightforward, and that the way that these animals solved the usual problems of life, such as eating and moving, was much more dynamic within the group than previously thought."
Ledumahadi mafube: South Africa's new jurassic giant
This is pretty cool.
