They’re among the most iconic of dinosaurs: the sauropods, long-necked, long-tailed herbivores that evolved into the largest land animals the planet has ever seen. They were essentially the cows of their day. Very, very big cows. But they didn’t start out that way. A new dinosaur unearthed in South Africa reveals there are more plot twists to the sauropod story than we thought.

Ledumahadi mafube, the “giant thunderclap at dawn,” weighed in at about 12 metric tons, or upwards of 26,000 pou