Dino of the Week: Ledumahadi

 

Type Species: Ledumahadi mafube

Classification: Dinosauria - Saurischia - Sauropoda - Lessemsauridae

Time Period: Early Jurassic

Location: South Africa

Diet: Herbivore

Ledumahadi’s name means ‘a giant thunderclap at dawn’ in the African Sesotho language. Ledumahadi lived in the Early Jurassic Period, and it’s discovery caused quite a stir in paleontological circles. It was double the size of a large African elephant and likely weighed around twelve tons, nearly equal in weight to the much later sauropod Diplodocus. Its size is remarkable because it dwarfed all its contemporaries: at over fifty feet in length, it was nearly twice the size of early Triassic sauropods, such as Camelotia and Antetonitrus, and it was even bigger than the first ‘true sauropods’ such as Vulcanodon, which came slightly later in the Early Jurassic. At first glance Ledumahadi may look like a ‘true sauropod,’ but it has something unique: its arms and legs were oddly thick, unlike the slender profiles of sauropod legs, and its limbs were flexed rather than columnar.