About 880 pounds, and still a youngster. That is the surprise behind Nyana rooiwalensis, a newly described dinosaur from South Africa whose size tells only half its story.
According to GENUS, South Africa’s Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences, the individual weighed an estimated 400 kilograms and died at roughly three years old. It lived around 210 million years ago near what is now Qhemegha in the Eastern Cape.
The skull was hiding in an ordinary-looking rock
Researchers found the skull inside an unassuming nodule lying on the ground. The preservation was exceptional: it retained the braincase, palate and delicate structures associated with the throat and eyes.
The research, led by Atashni Moopen, appears in Royal Society Open Science. This is a newly described species, not a claim that the fossil was dug up this week.
Big does not necessarily mean grown-up
Phys.org’s November 13 report explains how researchers separated size from maturity. They used powerful X-rays to reconstruct the skull digitally, and examined thin slices of limb bones under a microscope. The bone record indicated rapid growth and an animal at least in its third year of development.
The mass estimate came from thigh-bone measurements. It is an estimate, not a weigh-in, but the contrast is striking: an animal already weighing hundreds of kilograms had substantial growing left to do.
Extrapolating growth curves suggests adults might have reached several tonnes. That is a projection, not a measured adult Nyana. The distinction keeps an impressive fossil from becoming a claim the evidence cannot support.
Why call an 880-pound dinosaur “little”?
GENUS explains that Nyana refers to a son or child in isiXhosa and to something small in Sesotho. The name reflects youth rather than a lightweight animal.
The species belonged to the sauropodomorph group, which eventually produced enormous long-necked dinosaurs. Its combination of youth and size gives researchers another way to investigate how that evolutionary journey unfolded.
The joke almost writes itself: scientists named a dinosaur “little,” and it was already heavier than most things you would willingly share a room with. The serious discovery is that its bones showed it was not finished growing.
Featured image: photographs of the Nyana rooiwalensis holotype skull in dorsal, left lateral and ventral views. Credit: A. Moopen, J. Botha, R. Benson, K. E. J. Chapelle, P. M. Barrett, K. Dollman and J. N. Choiniere, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Reduced to 1280 by 978 pixels; no other changes.
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