A large dinosaur skeleton found in southern China appears to belong to a new species, according to a team of paleontologists studying the specimen.

Paleontologists found the fossilized skull in Lufeng Dinosaur National Geopark in Yunnan Province in China. The team determined that the skull belonged to a sauropodomorph—a group of dinosaurs that also included giant herbivorous sauropods such as Brachiosaurus—even one that is new to the scientific record.

The research team called the animal Lishulong is fragrant—”lishu” from the Chinese spelling of the chestnut tree, “long” in reference to a dragon, and “wangi” after a vertebrate paleontologist of the same name.

The team believes in that Lishulong is fragrant can grow up to 33 feet (10 meters) tall. The team’s findings are PUBLISHED last month at PeerJ.

“Based on current fossil records, Lishulong is fragrant is the largest sauropodomorph from the Early Jurassic epoch in China, and is considered morphologically mature,” the team wrote in the paper.

The team added that the animal has the largest skull of known sauropodomorphs from the Lufeng formation, indicating that researchers need to revisit relevant details to better understand the size of the animals in the group.

Zhang said LiveScience that the large dinosaur was probably a herbivore, and could be distinguished from its sister taxon—Yunnanosaurus—through its large nostrils. The animal’s fossilized skull is about 15.75 inches (40 centimeters) long, beating the previous largest skull in the region (which belonged to a Jingshanosaurus specimen) by about two inches (5 cm).

The large skull is only the latest discovery in China. In 2023, a team revealed a rare fossil of a mammal apparently preying on a beaked dinosaur; last year, a group of paleontologists published evidence on the contrary, in the shape of a mammal’s foot within the fossilized Microraptor.

In 2021, paleontologists published several fossil finds from the country, including remains of a nesting oviraptor (complete with fossilized dinosaur eggs), the impressive remains of a dinosaur cloacaand 500-million-year-old penis worms from Yunnan, the same province where paleontologists discovered it L. fragrant.

The team suggested that the discovery of L. fragrant can offer insights into the spread of the animal and its closest dinosaur relatives across Earth’s ancient supercontinent.

“Paleobiodiversity of early sauropodomorphs from Gondwana appears to have declined slightly after the Triassic-Jurassic boundary,” the researchers wrote. “Therefore, we hypothesize that non-sauropodan sauropodomorph genera survived and rapidly evolved in Laurasia, especially in China.” In other words, the first sauropodomorphs declined in Gondwana but flourished and diversified in Laurasia, especially in China.

However Lishulong is fragrant not as big as others actually large sauropods like titanosaurs, the beast still blows modern land animals from water er, land. The newly described fossil is now on display at the Lufeng World Dinosaur Valley museum.