Looking the Same

One of the things that sauropods are generally criticized for looking extremely similar to one another and being composed of highly fragmentary remains. These kinds of generalizations can be applied to a number of extinct animals known only from fossil; that does not make the generalizations any less true in some instances. However, one sauropod that looks somewhat distinctive is the African (Nigerian) dinosaur Jobaria tiguidensis. The dinosaur was recovered from the Sahara desert in 1997 and the simple fact that over 95% of the skeleton was pulled from the site makes this sauropod both one of the most complete sauropods ever recovered and one of the more distinctive and therefore different from other sauropods. Jobaria was an middle Jurassic (~164 million years ago) sauropod that embodied the Taureg legend of a beast with the same name. Jobaria may have been a little larger though starting at 60 feet (18.2 meters) long and 24.7 short tons (22.4 tonnes). Jobaria also had a very unique body posture, if all recreations are accurate:

(C) Steveoc