Jobaria was a sauropod dinosaur discovered in the Sahara Desert, and is one of the most completely known Cretaceous sauropods. It was named after "Jobar", a creature of local legends, and is thought to have been about 18 metres long. It lived in the Early Cretaceous (Aptian or Albian age).
Unusually for its late occurrence, Jobaria seems to be a very primitive sauropod. It has been interpreted either as a basal macronarian (Upchurch et al 2004), or as a non-neosauropod eusauropod, just prior to the Neosauropod clade.
The African Jobaria's backbone and tail are simple compared to the complex vertebrae and whiplast tail of the older North America sauropods Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. Unlike other Cretaceous sauropods, Jobaria had spoon-shaped teeth.
Jobaria, discovered in 1997, does not fit into any recognized family of long-necked dinosaurs. Rather, it represents an ancient lineage that survived and flourished only in Africa during the Cretaceous period (see above).
Bibliography
- Sereno, P.C., Beck, A.L., Dutheil, D.B., Larsson, H.C.E., Lyon, G.H., Moussa, B., Sadleir, R.W., Sidor, C.A., Varricchio, D.J., Wilson, G. P. & Wilson, J.A., (1999), Cretaceous Sauropods from the Sahara and the Uneven Rate of Skeletal Evolution Among Dinosaurs, Science 286(5443): 1342-1347 (Nov 12 1999)
- Upchurch, P., Barrett, P.M., and Dodson, P. 2004. Sauropoda. In The Dinosauria, 2nd edition. D. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.). University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Fantastic Facts About Dinosaurs (ISBN 0-7525-3166-2)
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