Quaesitosaurus Characteristics

Quaesitosaurus measured a huge 75 feet (23 metres) in length, 25 feet (7.6 metres) in height and weighed around 8 - 10 tons. It had a small head and peg-like teeth that were adapted for eating soft plant material. Its skull was elongated and the snout was narrow and it had large ear openings which might suggest it had an excellent sense of hearing. Quaesitosaurus was a long-necked dinosaur who had a flexible, long tail, a large bulky body and walked slowly on all 4 powerful, trunk-like legs.

Quaesitosaurus was a herbivore and must have eaten a huge amount of plant material and perhaps aquatic plants to sustain itself. It was able to swallow whole leaves without having to chew them and it had gastroliths (stomach stones) in its stomach to help digest tough plant material. The blunt teeth were useful for stripping foliage. It may have eaten conifers, gingkos, seed ferns, cycads, bennettitaleans, ferns, club mosses and horsetails.

Quaesitosaurus may have been a herd dinosaur and migrated when food sources were scarce. Eggs from these huge creatures have been found in rows which indicates that they laid the eggs as they were walking. Sauropods could live up to 100 years if they had managed to evade feirce carnivorous predators, however, the size of these gigantic dinosaurs would have been in the favour.

Quaesitosaurus was a sauropod, whose intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was the among the lowest of the dinosaurs. What was thought to be a second brain by some scientists turned out to be just an enlargement in the spinal cord in the hip area.

Quaesitosaurus is known only from a partial skull found in the the Barun Goyot Formation, southeastern Gobi desert, Mongolia.

Quaesitosaurus was named by Kurzanov and Bannikov in 1983.