Palaeontologists discovered a new species of dinosaur known as the Sefapanosaurus

FORGET digging in the dirt, all you have to do to discover a new species of dinosaur is open a storeroom at a South African university.

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PALAEONTOLOGISTS no longer need to spend endless hours meticulously digging through dirt to uncover new dinosaurs, they just have look inside storage cupboards.

Well, at least this was the case with the newly discovered species of dinosaur known as the Sefapanosaurus.

After being collected in the late 1930s, the remains of the dinosaur had been kept among the South Africa’s largest fossil collection located at Wits University in Johannesburg.

It was long believed the fossils belonged to another South African dinosaur known as the Aardonyx.

However, when palaeontologists Dr Alejandro Otero and Emil Krupandan examined the fossil collection, they realised the specimen’s ankle bones were shaped like a cross and did not match with that of the Aardonyx.

Unlike the Brontosaurus, the Sefapanosaurus walked on only two legs.

It was in this moment they realised they had stumbled across a new species of previously undiscovered dinosaur.

“This find indicates the importance of re-looking at old material that has only been cursorily studied in the past, in order to re-evaluate past preconceptions about sauropodomorph (herbivores with long necks) diversity in light of new data,” Mr Krupandan told the Guardian.

It is believed the Sefapanosaurus was a medium-sized sauropodomorph dinosaur that predated its long-necked relatives of the Mesozoic era.

Senior researcher in dinosaur palaeobiology at the university Dr Jonah Choiniere said unlike other sauropodomorph dinosaurs, the Sefapanosaurus only walked on its hind legs.

“We’re discovering how diverse South Africa was 200m years ago,” he said.

“When you look at the fossil record you think of one dinosaur hanging out, but it was probably an ecosystem as diverse as that of mammals today.”

The findings have been published in the Zoological Journal.