[Lee Stewart]

A new species of plant-eating dinosaur that roamed the Earth roughly 200 million years ago has been discovered in South Africa.

The relative of the Brontosaurus has been named Ledumahadi mafube ​– meaning “a giant thunderclap at dawn” in the Sesotho language of Free State province, where the fossils were found.

The previously unknown species was the largest land animal alive on Earth in the period, millions of years before Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor came on the scene, scientists said.

It weighed 12 tons and stood around 13ft tall at the hips – roughly double the size of a large African elephant.