Rapetosaurus

Rapetosaurus ( ) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived in Madagascar from 70 to 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Only one species, Rapetosaurus krausei, has been identified. Like other sauropods, Rapetosaurus was a quadrupedal herbivore. It is calculated to have reached lengths of in adulthood.

==Description== Rapetosaurus was a fairly typical sauropod, with a short and slender tail, a very long neck and a huge, elephant-like body. Its head resembles the head of a diplodocid, with a long, narrow snout and nostrils on the top of its skull. It was a herbivore and its small, pencil-like teeth were good for ripping the leaves off trees but not for chewing. thumb|Size comparison between the juvenile Rapetosaurus and a human|250x250px It was fairly modest in size for a titanosaur. The juvenile specimen measured from head to tail and "probably weighed about as much as an elephant". An adult would have been about twice as long ( in length), which is still less than half the length of its gigantic kin, like Argentinosaurus and Paralititan. In 2020, Molina-Perez and Larramendi estimated the size of the probable adult specimen (MAD 93-18), which is known from a femur, at 16.5 meters (54 ft) and 10.3 tonnes (11.35 short tons).