Named Ibirania parva, the species was disclosed last week by paleontologist Bruno Navarro.

The name comes from the union of the words Ibirá, the city where it was found, Ania, which in Greek means pilgrim, and parva, the Latin word for small.

The animal is a Titanosaurus of five to six meters long, a herbivorous species known for its large neck. It is considered the first ‘dwarf of the Americas’.

G1 indicates that the discovery was derived from work carried out since the 1990s and published in an international scientific journal on September 15.

In an interview with the site, Navarro, a paleontologist from the Zoology Museum of the University of Sao Paulo, pointed out that ‘since 1999 the collections began, year in which they found some fossils of the new species’ and ‘the material of the holotype (individual that bears the name of the species) was discovered by Professor Dr. Marcelo Adorna Fernandes, in 2005’.

Viriato Antônio Lobo de Araújo, secretary of Tourism of Ibirá and volunteer of the excavations, was responsible for locating it in Vila Ventura, where the work was carried out.

Besides proving that the species was smaller compared to other Titanosaurs, the team was surprised by the dwarf form as the first recorded in the Americas.

As the Ibirá region had no relationship with the sea, the researchers were motivated to understand how the environment of the time influenced the size of the species.

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