Issi saaneq

"cold"

Generic sauropod body-plan outline
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Issi 5 m (16.4 ft) long
as long as 3 people standing fingertip to fingertip
generic sauropod body plan, scaled to length — not a silhouette of Issi
Length
5 m (16.4 ft)
Period
Late Triassic (225 Mya)
Place
Brazil
Food
Herbivore
Clade
Plateosauridae Dinosauria Saurischia Sauropodomorpha Triassic-Jurassic prosauropods, ancestors to giant sauropods.

Issi (meaning “cold” in Greenlandic) is a plateosaurid dinosaur from the Late Triassic Fleming Fjord Formation of Greenland. It contains one species, Issi saaneq; the full binomial name means “cold bone”. Fossils of Issi were previously assigned to the species Plateosaurus trossingensis, but new finds allowed for a reassessment of that material that showed that it possessed features thought to be exclusive to Brazilian sauropodomorphs such as Unaysaurus and Macrocollum. This ultimately led to the designation of Issi as a distinct genus in 2021. This taxon is the first non-avian dinosaur described from Greenland.

What we know

  • Named by Beccari et al., 2021.
  • Fossils found in Brazil.

What we guess

The reconstruction notes for Issi — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.