Amanzia is a type of dinosaur that lived around 157 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period. It is a member of the sauropod dinosaurs, which are known for their long necks and massive bodies.
Amanzia was discovered in Switzerland, specifically in a place called the Reuchenette Formation. The only species identified so far within this genus is Amanzia greppini. Over the years, this dinosaur was initially misclassified under different names, such as Megalosaurus meriani and Ornithopsis greppini, before finally being named Amanzia in 2020.
The bones of Amanzia were first found in the 1860s when workers were digging in a limestone quarry. Some of the bones ended up with collectors, but a geologist named Jean-Baptiste Greppin managed to gather many of the remaining bones and took them to a museum in Basel, Switzerland.
At first, some of the bones were thought to belong to a predator because of a nearby theropod tooth, which was later identified with a different dinosaur named Labrosaurus. In the 1920s, paleontologist Friedrich von Huene recognized some bones were from a sauropod and gave it a new name, Ornithopsis greppini. Later, it was renamed Cetiosauriscus.
In 2020, researchers saw that Amanzia was not closely related to Cetiosauriscus, and thus the name Amanzia was adopted to honor a Swiss geologist named Amanz Gressly, who was the first person to discover dinosaur bones in Switzerland.
The fossils found include parts of neck and tail bones, as well as pieces of the shoulder, pelvis, and limbs. The bones are often damaged due to being removed from the rock they were found in, but they indicate that at least four individual dinosaurs existed.
In size comparison, two of these individuals were about the same size, while others varied in length. These fascinating discoveries give us a glimpse into the world of dinosaurs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago.