Additionally, some of the vertebrae were divided into two parallel tracks, similar to how the human spine is structured. The resulting channel in between the split likely once contained a ligament that helped with neck support.

Warren Allmon, director of the Paleontological Research Institution affiliated with Cornell University, told Animal Planet News that the new dinosaur is "extraordinary," not only for the length of its neck, but also because it adds to evidence suggesting that sauropods held their necks parallel to the ground.

"The images you and I grew up with that showed many dinosaurs with S-shaped necks reaching upwards, like the necks on a giraffe, were probably all wrong," Allmon said. "Based on what we now know from sauropod fossils, there is no way that such dinosaurs held their necks upright."

He explained that E. ellisoni's neck was sort of like a cantilever, with the attached ligament holding it in the seemingly headache-inducing parallel horizontal position.

Allmon added, "I also agree that the new dinosaur probably had one of the longest necks among dinosaurs, but I won't stick my own neck out on exactly how this one measures up."

All sauropods, including the new dino, were four-legged herbivores. Around 100 to 120 million years ago, E. ellisoni would have tromped around what is now Mongolia's Gobi Desert, but what was then a floodplain.

Researchers are not certain what killed the animal, but they know it was an adult when it died because some of its neck bones were fused, which only happens in mature sauropods.

Silt near what would have been a watery site landed on top of the dinosaur and preserved it, along with reptiles, birds, turtles, meat-eating dinosaurs and an unusual okra-shaped fruit that may represent a newly discovered plant species.

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