The fossilised remains of a new, long-necked dinosaur have recently been uncovered in Madagascar.

The plant-eating sauropod was discovered by a field crew from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the Universite d'Antananarivo and was named Rapetosaurus krausei. The remains include a adult skull and a nearly complete juvenile skull and skeleton. The discovery was announced in the journal Nature.

The adult Rapetosauru would have measured about 50 feet in length, with a small head and long neck. It lived in the Late Cretaceous Period, approximately 70 million years ago. It belongs to a group of sauropod dinosaurs called titanosaurs, the last family of sauropod dinosaurs to evolve.

The discovery is important because sauropod skulls have seldom been found and this find helps scientists work out how the various titanosaur species are related to one another.