A 400-Kilogram Dinosaur From South Africa Was Still Growing When It Died

A new Triassic dinosaur from South Africa's Eastern Cape Province has been named Nyana rooiwalensis, described from what its authors call the first well-preserved, near-complete skull recovered from the lower Elliot Formation. The description was published Nov. 11, 2026, in Royal Society Open Science.

The paper reports that body-mass estimates put the animal at roughly 400 kg, while cut sections of its bone show at most two lines of arrested growth (the marks left where growth stalls) and a rippled outer bone surface. The authors take both as signs of an early stage of growth, and write that the combination supports the early evolution of rapid growth in sauropodomorphs, the lineage that went on to produce the long-necked giants.

Atashni Moopen, of the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, is the paper's first author, and the institute's Jonah N. Choiniere is its senior author. The specimen they describe preserves the braincase and the palate, the hyoid bones of the throat and the scleral rings that sat inside the eyes, together with bones from the rest of the skeleton.

The paper notes that Triassic skulls from this group are scarce, known mainly from Argentina, Brazil and Europe. In southern Africa, only two Late Triassic species, Mbiresaurus and Kholumolumo, had preserved any skull bone at all, both from limited material.

Where Nyana belongs on the family tree is not settled. The analyses recovered it as the closest relative of either Sarahsaurus, from North America, or Ngwevu, from South Africa. The paper is free to read under a Creative Commons license.