You can call it a Triassic titan. Or a pre-Jurassic juggernaut. Just don’t call it a dinosaur. Despite its appearance, this burly behemoth was a completely different prehistoric beast: a dicynodont.

Early relatives to present-day mammals, dicynodonts dominated Earth more than 200 million years ago, living first before, and then alongside, dinosaurs. Unlike dinosaurs, these herbivorous animals had short necks and large skulls. They were stocky like rhinos, toothless and had tusks and turtle-like beaks. Many ranged in sizes from pigs to hippos, though some were small enough to burrow into the ground.

Now, scientists have uncovered a new species of dicynodont that towered over the rest, comparable in size to an elephant.

The newly discovered species, known as Lisowicia bojani, was 8.5 feet tall and about 15 feet long, and weighed 9 tons. It is both the largest and youngest dicynodont found so far and its discovery provides further evidence that these proto-mammals survived into the late Triassic Period, past the point when many scientists had previously thought they went extinct.