BYU professors name new dinosaur found in eastern Utah

Brigham Young University officials say they’ve named a new dinosaur that they found hidden in Utah.

BYU professors have created a full picture of the sauropod from thousands of fossilized bones and published a paper Tuesday in the University of Michigan’s Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology.

The creature has been named Moabosaurus because it was found near Moab. Like other sauropods, researchers say it was an herbivore with a long neck and tail and a small brain but it was much smaller, at 32 feet.

The paper says the Moabosaurus is 125 million years old and its skeleton was found in a quarry. Geologist Brooks Britt and his team have been excavating the bones since the late 1970s.

The skeleton is on display at BYU’s Museum of Paleontology.