Jobaria

Type Species: Jobaria tiguidensis

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda - Gravisauria - Eusauropoda

Time Period: Middle Jurassic

Location: Africa (Niger) 

Diet: Herbivore 

In the Middle Jurassic, Saharan Africa was a lush mosaic of woodlands, rivers, and lakes. One of the prime tenets was the primitive sauropod Jobaria. This sauropod was discovered in 1997 when a local Tuareg tribesman showed paleontologist Paul Sereno and a team of nineteen scientists a collection of strange bones that the Tuareg tribes-people associated with a mythical monster named Jobar. The exposed bones comprised a nearly complete skeleton that was part of a larger mass graveyard containing the remains of numerous adults and youngsters of a hitherto-unknown sauropod. One juvenile specimen bore bite-marks on its ribs that fit the teeth of Afrovenator, a prime carnivore of Jurassic northern Africa. An adult Jobaria grew to seventy feet in length head-to-tail and would’ve weighed up to twenty tons. The neck was relatively short with twelve vertebrae (more derived sauropods had eighteen or nineteen); the tail, too, was relatively short, and its vertebrae were simple, lacking the complex projections, scoops, and air-filled cavities of many later sauropods. The hind legs were strong enough to enable it to rear up on its hind legs to eat higher leaves, which it stripped with its spoon-shaped teeth. Jobaria’s position in the sauropod family tree is debated; some scientists consider it part of the ‘macronarians,’ giant sauropods distinguished by long necks and large snouts, while others consider it a ‘survivor sauropod’ that didn’t belong to any of the main sauropod families but which was a leftover of earlier times in sauropodomorph history.