Brachytrachelopan

What it was like

Brachytrachelopan was a sauropod with a surprisingly short neck. Most sauropods had very long necks, but this one's neck was shorter than its back, so it probably fed close to the ground, on low plants, rather than reaching high into trees.

It was about 10 meters (33 feet) long and belonged to the dicraeosaurs, a family of smaller sauropods that includes Amargasaurus and Dicraeosaurus.

Its world

It lived about 155 to 145 million years ago, in the Late Jurassic, in what is now Argentina. Its bones come from the Cañadón Calcáreo Formation, where it shared the land with the larger sauropod Tehuelchesaurus.

How it was found

Rauhut and colleagues named Brachytrachelopan in 2005, from a single partial skeleton. The first bones were spotted by a shepherd looking for lost sheep, which is where the name comes from.