New dinosaur discovery in Switzerland fills a gap in evolutionary history of sauropods

Dinosaurs were the dominant group of animals on Earth for over 150 million years. Long-necked, plant-eating sauropods such as Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus are probably among the most famous dinosaurs, in part thanks to their huge size and strange body shape (consisting of a long neck, long tail, round body and columnar limbs). My colleagues and I recently identified a new dinosaur species that represents the oldest known evolutionary step between early sauropodomorphs and sauropods, from about 225 million years ago.