Bones of a newly discovered species of vegetarian dinosaur have been dug up in Brazil.

Axar.az reports citing Independent.

Three “astonishingly well preserved” skeletons were uncovered and shed new light on one of the earliest of the long-necked dinosaurs that lived more than 225 million years ago.

The new species, which lived before giant dinosaurs had emerged, would have weighed about 16st and grown to around 12ft long and 5ft tall.

Named Macrocollum itaquii, it is a distant cousin of the sauropods – the later long-necked beasts that walked on four legs, such as Brontosaurus, which grew into the largest terrestrial animal to walk on Earth.