A new dinosaur species has been discovered in Australia

Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur in Australia. The wide-hipped, long-necked, four-legged plant-eater was about half the length of a basketball court, and its shoulders stood as high as the hoop. Dinosaur fossils in Australia are exceedingly rare, and this discovery could help scientists understand how these massive creatures spread across the planet millions of years ago.

"THERE ARE ENTIRE LOST WORLDS OF DINOSAURS WAITING TO BE FOUND."

David Elliott, now the chairman of theAustralian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, stumbled across the fossils by chance in 2005. He was herding sheep in the northern Australian town of Wintonwhen he discovered what he thought were fossilized limb bones. When his wife Judy Elliott fit two of the fossils together, they realized that the bones were in fact the toe of a massive, plant-eating dinosaur. The rest of the skeleton revealed that it was an entirely new species from the group of vegetarian dinosaurs called sauropods.

Today, after more than 10 years of work, a team of scientists led by Australian paleontologist Stephen Poropatofficially published their discovery in the journal Scientific Reports. They named the species Savannasaurus elliottorumafter the the Elliott family and the grassy region where they discovered it. This is an important discovery, saysMatthew Lamanna, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pennsylvania who was not involved in this study. "Dinosaurs from Australia are extraordinarily rare, and most Australian dinosaurs are represented by just a few bits and pieces," he says.

David Elliott holding the toe of Savannasaurus elliottorum.Courtesy John Elliott and Winton Shire Council

By contrast, the Savannasaurus skeleton is one of the most complete sauropods to be discovered in Australia. Based on its skeleton, it was probably about 50 feet long, with a long neck and a wide, round body — weighing in at 40,000 pounds, as much as three African elephants combined, Poropat says. The researchers haven’t found any fossilized dung or teeth to determine whatSavannasaurus ate, but it likely grew to that size on a low-quality vegetarian diet. That might be why the dinosaur was so wide across the middle: it needed a really long gut to extract the nutrients from its fibrous food.