And another one - from the Red Rock

I can't help but wonder if there were new dinosaur descriptions almost daily before I started keeping up with them. Regardless, here's a contribution from the red rocks of Utah. A new paper in PLoS One, summarized here at Science Daily, reports the discovery of Seitaad ruessi, a sauropodomorph from the Early Jurassic. This species was 10-15 feet long, and would have stood 3-4 feet tall at the shoulder. Of course, the sauropodomorphs would ultimately include the giant sauropods like Diplodocus that were over 100' in length.

The etymology is interesting - Seit'aad is a Navajo word for a monster from the Navajo creation legend that swallowed its victims in sand. The manner in which Seitaad ruessi is preserved suggests that it met exactly that fate about 185 million years ago.

Thanks for the heads-up, Gerald.