New dinosaur fossil explains how Diplodocus evolved to be so massive

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…