In 1924, Heber Longman, self-trained paleontologist at (and later director of) the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, learned of a large fossil reptile skeleton exposed at the Durham Downs Station near Roma in central Queensland. The station manager, Arthur Browne, forwarded fragments of bone to Longman, and was honoured with the dinosaur's specific name brownei. Rhoetosaurus is among the best-known sauropods thus far discovered in Australia, as well as for the Jurassic of Gondwana.