page_title: Mussaurus
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Mussaurus / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Life restoration of adult Mussaurus patagonicus based on the skeletal reconstruction from Otero et al. (2019).
context_page_description: Mussaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived in southern Argentina during the Late Triassic, about 215 million years ago. It receives its name from the small size of the skeletons of juvenile and infant individuals, which were once the only known specimens of the genus. However, since Mussaurus is now known from adult specimens, the name is something of a misnomer; adults possibly reached 6 metres in length and weighed more than 1,000 kilograms. Mussaurus possesses anatomical features suggesting a close, possibly transitional evolutionary relationship with true sauropods.
context_section_description: Infant and juvenile fossils of Mussaurus were first discovered by an expedition led by Jose Bonaparte during the 1970s to the Laguna Colorada Formation. There the team found fossilized eggs and hatchlings, which added insight into the reproductive strategies of Mussaurus and other sauropodomorph dinosaurs. The first adult specimens of Mussaurus were described in 2013. Some of these specimens had first been described in 1980 and were originally attributed to the genus Plateosaurus.
caption: Life restoration of adult Mussaurus
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