AUSTRALODOCUS

The remains that would become Australodocus were hauled from "Quarry G" in Tanzania's famous Tendaguru beds in 1909 by Werner Janensch, who assigned them, along with a zillion other fragments, to the area's resident diplodocid; Barosaurus africanus, in 1922. Barosaurus africanus itself was initially named Gigantosaurus africanus by Fraas in 1908 because he thought an unrelated sauropod from England—Gigantosaurus megalonyx—had been sunk into Ornithopsis humerocristatus and the generic name was available, but Richard Sternfeld renamed it Tornieria africanus in 1911 when the latter proved not to be the case. It was brushed off as "?Barosaurus with no formal assignment" by McIntosh in 1990 before Paul Upchurch re-christened it Tornieria africana in 2004. By the by, its fossil bedfellow, Tornieria robustus, followed a similarly tangled taxonomic route. But ultimately, it was renamed Janenschia by Rupert Wild in 1991.

In 2007, Kristian Remes revisited the Tornieria africana fossils that Allied forces had missed when they bombed the Munich Museum during WWII and stumbled upon a pair of previously undescribed neck vertebrae labelled "Barosaurus africanus" that were initially part of a four-bone set. They were much shorter than all other Tornieria neck verts and thus became Australodocus. But they still sported the typical forked spines and three other features that allegedly confirmed a diplodocid affinity, which was big news. If Australodocus were diplodocids, then Tendaguru would join North America's Morrison as one of only two Jurassic Formations to boast several diplodocid species. It would also mean that renowned-for-low-browsing diplodocids were flourishing in an African environment dominated by high-browse flora such as araucarian and podocarpacian conifer trees that only energy-expensive manoeuvres would allow them to reach.

In light of this startling revelation, Whitlock revisited Australodocus to work out why diplodocids were thriving in an eco-system that they were ill-equipped to thrive in and realised that Australodocus weren't so ill-equipped, after all. Their vertebrae are riddled with small internal cavities (camellae) and other features typical of macronarian sauropods such as Brachiosaurus, who held their necks more vertically and were perfectly pitched to snatch fodder from tall trees. In fact, Giraffatitan—a macronarian previously known as Brachiosaurus brancai—sports all of the features that are "unique" to Australodocus, and it was found just a stone's throw from "Quarry G". Just sayin'.