“Unveiling the Colossal Giant: Scientists Uncover the 26,000-Pound Dinosaur That Dominated the Earth!”
The Jurassic-era animal, which was a close relative of the brontosaurus, was massive. The researchers believe that it weighed 26,000 pounds and was the largest land animal of its time. The animal’s discovery is groundbreaking not only because of its size but because of the insight it has given scientists into the evolution of its later relatives.
According to CNN, Blair McPhee, a graduate student and paleontologist, discovered the dinosaur’s bones back in 2012. They didn’t know what species of dinosaur the bones belonged to and the rest of the bones were still in rocks in the field, making excavation a painstaking process.
“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 explained to NPR.
Blair McPhee/Current BiologySome of the preserved elements of the newly discovered Ledumahadi mafube.
After years of excavating, the team removed the bones, studied them and made their startling discovery: a new dinosaur. They concluded that the dinosaur was a fully-grown adult and had been around 14 years old when it died.
The Ledumahadi mafube was an early ancestor of the sauropods, which were a group of large herbivores, like the brontosaurus, that walked on all four legs. However, the researchers believe that the Ledumahadi mafube itself evolved from smaller ancestors who got around on two legs.
This fact caused researchers to label the Ledumahadi as a transitional dinosaur, meaning it was a kind of evolutionary experiment that was a combination of different traits.
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