New dinosaur fossil explains how Diplodocus evolved to be so massive

Cecilia Apaldetti

Diplodocus is the largest creature to have walked, but not much is known about how it evolved such proportions. A new fossil challenges current ideas about the path to giant dinosaurs.

Cecilia Apaldetti and her colleagues at the National University of San Juan, Argentina, discovered a previously unknown dinosaur in north-west Argentina within a formation that dates to the late Triassic, around 220 million years ago. The researchers have christened it Ingentia prima, and placed it in a group of early sauropodomorphs called the lessemsaurids.

The …