Dinosaur with a 49ft neck? You’re having a giraffe...

THE idea of an animal with a neck longer than a bus may sound like a creature from a science-fiction blockbuster.

But a fossil discovery in north-west China has revealed that such an animal was once a reality, in the form of a dinosaur that roamed 162million years ago. In fact, the late Jurassic sauropod known as Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum may have had the longest neck of any animal ever to exist, at a whopping 9 feet (15 metres).

This is more than six times longer than a

giraffe’s neck and 1.5 times that of a bus. The dinosaur’s neck length is more than double that of the Natural History Museum’s most famous former resident, Dippy the Diplodocus. The discovery is published in the JourWind nal of Systematic Palaeontology.

your neck in! An artist’s rendering of the mighty Mamenchisaurus

Fearsome: A fossil of the animal’s jaw