Janenschia Characteristics

Janenschia measured 80 feet (24 metres) and weighed around 33 tons. It had an enormous long neck and a long tail. Janenschia walked very slowly on 4 thick legs using its long tail to graze high vegetation. The hindlimbs had claws. The femur (thigh bone) was up to 4 -5 feet (1.38 metres) long. Janenschia, like some other titanosaurids, may have been covered with armoured plates, but there is no fossil evidence of this. Janenschia had a small head and blunt teeth.

Janenschia and some of the other large sauropods (the huge long-necked plant-eaters) needed to have large, powerful hearts and very high blood pressure in order to pump blood up the long neck to the head and brain. The heads (and brains) of Janenschia was held high (many metres) above its heart at times. This presents a problem in blood-flow engineering. In order to pump enough oxygenated blood to the head to operate the brain (even its tiny sauropod brain) would require a large, powerful heart, tremendously high blood pressure, and wide, muscular blood vessels with many valves (to prevent the back-flow of blood). Janenschias blood pressure was probably very much higher than ours.

Janenschia was a herbivorous dinosaur that only ever ate plants. It had to eat an incredible amount of plant matter to sustain its energy. It swallowed leaves whole and probably ate gastroliths (stomach stones) to help digest the tough plant material.

Although many sauropods may have traveled in herds, bonebeds of Janenschia fossils have not been discovered, only an incomplete fossil has been unearthed. Janenschia may have been a solitary dinosaur.

Janenschia may have hatched from eggs, like other sauropods. Sauropod eggs have been found in rows and not in nests. Presumably the eggs were laid as the dinosaur was walking. It is thought that sauropods did not take care of their eggs. Sauropods life spans may have been in the order of 100 years.

Janenschia was a sauropod, whose intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was the among the lowest of the dinosaurs.

This giant plant-eater was the earliest-known titanosaurid and was named by paleontologist Rupert Wild in 1991.