Mamenchisaurus Hochuanensis: Dinosaur With The Longest Neck For Its Body Size

Question: What dinosaur had the longest neck for its body size?

Answer: The dinosaur with the longest neck for its body size is Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis, a sauropod dino.

Mamenchisaurus was first discovered in 1952 on the construction site of the Yitang Highway in Sichuan, China. The partial skeleton fossil was then studied, and named Mamenchisaurus constructus in 1954, by the renowned Chinese paleontologist Professor C. C. Young.

Researchers have confirmed that about 160 sixty million years ago the Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis, lived in what is now China. Mamenchisaurs was huge, but she was the largest sauropods.

She and her relatives have at least one big distinction, though: they have the longest necks for their body size of any dinosaur known. She was 18 years old, weighed 13 tons (about 12,000 kg), ate 1,150 lbs (525 kg) of food per day, and had no predators as an adult.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a Mamenchisaur specimen with a 60-foot-long (18 m) total length, a whopping 30 feet (9 m) of which is neck.

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Source:
American Museum of Natural History