Meet the New Dinosaur That Scientists Just Discovered

Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur that they’ve named Sefapanosaurus.

On Wednesday, researchers announced that palaeontologists discovered a new 200 million-year-old dinosaur from South Africa. The catch? The bones had actually been found in the 1930s and were hiding in plain sight in the large fossil collection at the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at Wits University.

Researchers had previously thought the remains were from a dinosaur called Aardonyx, but upon further study, they learned it was actually an entirely different dinosaur. This new dinosaur is believed to be a medium-sized sauropodomorph, which is a group that gave rise to the familiar long-necked dinosaurs of the Mesozoic era, the researchers say.The researchers published their findings in the Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society.

“Sefapanosaurus constitutes a member of the growing list of transitional sauropodomorph dinosaurs from Argentina and South Africa that are increasingly telling us about how they diversified,” study author and Argentinian palaeontologist Alejandro Otero said in a statement.