"This new dinosaur suggests that the evolutionary transition from a small, bipedal [sauropod-like creature] to a large, quadrupedal sauropod was a bit more complex than previously thought," said Gorscak.
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A footprint left by a sauropod 170 million years ago.
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Savannasaurus elliottorum, a new species of sauropod discovered in Australia.
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Artist's impression of Bajadasaurus pronuspinax, a newly discovered sauropod dinosaur from South America.
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The palaeontologists also found the first partial sauropod skull on record from Australia.
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Sauropod populations caught in this geological divorce became physically separated, spawning new evolutionary trajectories.
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Bajadasaurus was a sauropod, a wildly successful group of long-necked, four-legged dinosaurs.
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The 403-foot-long tracks likely belonged to a long-necked, small-headed sauropod.
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"This is surely the smallest out-of-the-egg sauropod," Dr. Curry Rogers said.
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The record setting fossils reportedly from the food of a sauropod, thankfully, a herbivore.
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It is the first sauropod in Australia ever found with its skull partially intact.
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Ms. dePolo plans to explore the Isle of Skye for more sauropod and theropod footprints.
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The barrel-chested Wade, the most rotund sauropod found so far, weighed about 22 tons.
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And some tracks are among the largest ever recorded, including sauropod tracks around 5.6 feet long.
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This is perhaps my favourite depiction of a sauropod that I have ever laid eyes on.
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At one end of rock, above, is a single footprint from a young, long-necked sauropod.
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At just under a meter wide, the researchers said it is the largest sauropod foot ever discovered.
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Upon closer inspection, he discovered the outlines of toes and a fleshy heel pad — a sauropod footprint.
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Paleoartistic restoration [CDS1] of Razanandrongobe sakalavae scavenging on a sauropod carcass in the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar.
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Lingwulong shenqi was not as big as some of its sauropod cousins, like the Apatosaurus or Diplodocus.
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The large, long-necked dinosaur belonged to the sauropod group, known as the largest land animals on Earth.
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One of about 50 footprints found on the Isle of Skye, this impression belonged to a four-legged sauropod.
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According to the study's lead author, Steve Salisbury, the huge footprint is probably from some kind of sauropod dinosaur.
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The largest print, belonging to the sauropod, was about 27.5 inches, and the largest theropod track was about 19.6 inches.
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Its discovery sheds new light on sauropod evolution as well as how these impressive beasts managed to conquer the globe.
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For this reason, some at the site speculated that the tracks might be a game trail: theropods stalking their sauropod prey.
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Diplodocoids are part of the sauropod subgroup — the one known for those big plant-eaters with four legs and long necks.
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At one end of the slab, there is a single footprint of a juvenile sauropod, a long-necked plant-eating dinosaur.
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In terms of size, the sauropod tracks top a dinosaur footprint found in the Mongolian desert that measured about 3.8 feet long.
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Ledumahadi was a close relative of sauropod dinosaurs, like the brontosaurus and others that ate plants and walked on all four legs.
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If the recent-formation scenario is true, that means Saturn had no rings when giant sauropod dinosaurs roamed the Earth during the Jurassic.
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Pigment did not occur in the crocodilian, sauropod, or ornithischian eggs (the other two dinosaur groups), according to the study published in Nature.
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The fossil is now on display at the museum alongside another dinosaur from the Winton Formation, a large, unique sauropod called Savannasaurus elliottorum.
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Skin mummified to its bones and a 70 percent complete skull make this one of the best preserved sauropod skeletons in the world.
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Since then, scientists have succeeded in rebuilding over half a sauropod, according to Le Parisien, along with other bone, fossil and vertebrate discoveries.
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If only those Victorian museum-goers had known that when they awed over Brontosaurus displays, they were looking at only a mid-sized sauropod.
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"This tracksite is the second discovery of sauropod footprints on Skye," said Paige dePolo, the lead author of the new study, in a statement.
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Back at the track site, volunteers were digging excitedly toward the back wall, hoping to learn what would come of the erratically angling sauropod.
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This sleek-looking sauropod lived around 15 million years after Bajadasaurus, but its spikes were much shorter and they leaned backward instead of forward.
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But scientists needed a skeleton from a very young sauropod in order to better understand this phenomenal growth, and just how fast it happened.
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It's not only the largest sauropod foot ever identified, but also the first confirmed brachiosaur foot from the Late Jurassic period of North America.
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That sauropod was known as Vulcanodon and it walked the Earth around 180 million years ago and measured about 20 to 35 feet long.
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"These footprints are the best of their kind in Australia and their shape can be distinguished from all known sauropod footprints worldwide," Poropat added.
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Its collection included a 160 million-year-old fossil bone of a sauropod, bird eggs, preserved butterflies, stuffed animals and birds, herpetological specimens and dioramas.
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Scientists determined the dinosaur — a very close relative of Brachiosaurus — had the biggest feet of any sauropod, and roamed the area 150 million years ago.
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The big picture: The study, published this week in Nature Communications, details the oldest diplodocoid — massive sauropod dinosaurs with long necks and tails — ever found.
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Some species of sauropod were exceptionally big, though the team didn't give an estimate of the size of the dinosaurs responsible for the Winton tracks.
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To figure that out, they used a 3D scanning technique to make computerized images of the foot bones, and compared them to other sauropod foot fossils.
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The discovery of the four-legged Ledumahadi means sauropod evolution didn't follow a straight, simple path, and that sauropods evolved four-legged postures as least twice.
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When the first sauropod bones were found, they were so big that the scientists of the day couldn't believe they came from a land-living animal.
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"To have had the privilege of describing the first sauropod braincase ever found in Australia has been very humbling," Poropat told Live Science in an email.
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But Judy found otherwise when she clicked the two end pieces together, revealing that the fossils were actually the toe bone of a sauropod, Poropat said.
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This distinction corroborates past speculation that sauropod juveniles did not experience much parental care, and did not run in the same circles as their adult counterparts.
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Footprints on the track include 20 made by a large sauropod, a type of dinosaur that had a long trunk and tail and large, thick legs.
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Specifically, it seems to be a dicraeosaurid, a small clade of sauropod dinosaurs with slightly shorter necks and a series of sharp spines protruding from their vertebrae.
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This month, the American Museum of Natural History is adding another must-see to its legendary Fossil Halls: a cast of a 122-foot-long sauropod dinosaur.
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And the group's recent discovery of adult sauropod tracks alongside previously uncovered juvenile tracks lends support to an emerging theory that these dinosaurs traveled as a family.
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The discovery of Savannasaurus in Australia, along with the recent discovery of another sauropod called Diamantinasaurus, shows that titanosaurs were living worldwide by 100 million years ago.
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In addition to the flora and fauna collections, it also displays several fossils, one of which is the femur bone of a dinosaur belonging to the Sauropod group.
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Sauropod skulls are notoriously rare in the fossil record, because their heads were small and delicate compared to more robust skeletal features like vertebrae, femurs, or pelvic girdles.
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And as noted, this oversized sauropod had a heart-shaped tailbone, comprised of two tail vertebrae with conspicuous extensions on the centrum (the central part of the vertebrae).
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A. Although very ancient ferns are thought to have been a large part of the diet of sauropod dinosaurs, today ferns are avoided by many vertebrates, including deer.
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The massive sauropod dinosaurs crossing the same flat might have been looking for a less cluttered way to a new area than passing through a thick inland forest.
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Last year, Dr. Billon-Bruyat was part of a team that studied the shell of an ancient sea turtle that had apparently been stepped on by a sauropod.
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He pushed aside loose, reddish dirt with his hands, revealing a bone the size of a microwave oven — the limb of a sauropod dinosaur, said Dr. Schumacher, a paleontologist.
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The newfound sauropod, dubbed Wade, would have stood almost 10 feet (3 metres) tall at its shoulders, and walked on all fours, equipped with five toes on each foot.
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After all, there are inevitably times when regular, word-based language fails us, and only a lunging raptor or long-necked sauropod can adequately express our thoughts and emotions.
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"The metatarsals do seem to be longer than those of any other known sauropod dinosaur, so in that regard this is probably the largest foot ever discovered," Mannion told Gizmodo.
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A new study in Scientific Reports shows it to be the most complete sauropod dinosaur skeleton ever found in Australia (sauropods being those iconic long-necked, long-tailed, quadrupedal dinosaurs).
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"This is where the big boy started getting in trouble," said Sonny Fernandez, 77, resting by sauropod tracks that get deeper with each step and appear to be angling erratically left.
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The braincase helped fill in some gaps in the species' anatomy that paleontologists were missing, and also provided insight as to where that titanosaur fit in the sauropod tree of life.
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Sauropods proliferated in the Late Jurassic epoch, but the discovery of Lingwulong shenqi in rocks from the Middle Jurassic suggests that sauropod species began to diverge much earlier than we thought.
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The femur bone is over six feet long and is thought to have belonged to a sauropod -- a subgroup of herbivorous, long-necked and four-legged dinosaurs common in the Jurassic era.
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About 95 million years ago, a bus-size and scaly-skinned sauropod dinosaur with a long tail and even longer neck lumbered across what is now Queensland, Australia, a new study finds.
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Maltese and team members Emanuel Tschopp, Femke Holwerda, and David Burnham used 3D scanning and highly detailed measurements to compare the large specimen to various species of sauropod, including Camarasaurus and Diplodocus.
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"It's so exciting because what that means is that we have a lot more to discover," said Mathew Wedel, a paleontologist and sauropod expert who was not a part of the study.
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Sauropod dinosaurs, for example, had limbs like columns to support their massive weight, yet their load was most likely lightened by an avian-like respiration system, which permeated their skeleton with air sacs.
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The titanosaurs were the largest dinosaurs that ever lived and the last sauropod group remaining at the end of the Cretaceous Period, 65 to 70 million years ago, just before all dinosaurs went extinct.
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Led by Cary Woodruff, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto, the paper describes the smallest skull ever found from a Diplodocus, a type of giant sauropod that lived in the late Jurassic period.
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"This means that actually a large number of different sauropod groups must have evolved a lot earlier than previously realized," said Philip Mannion, a paleontologist at Imperial College London and one of the study's authors.
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This is shown beautifully by Bob Walters' illustration "The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi"—the cover art for Mitchell's book, which depicts a sauropod rearing as riders close in on it in the badlands.
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Dal Sasso told me the predator likely feasted on sauropod stragglers (long-necked herbivores), small mammals, and pterosaurs, but it will require more fossil evidence to make any broader conclusions about this basal notosuchian's behavior and anatomy.
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The other fossil set belongs to a previously known species called Diamantinasaurus matildae, and includes the first cranial remains of a sauropod—the scientific name for these iconic long-necked dinosaurs—that have ever been found in Australia.
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The two-meter long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.
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Because there aren't any sauropod bones on Australia that are more than 105 million years old, the authors of the study suspect that the dinosaurs may have traveled there from South America via Antarctica during a warming period.
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Maltese and his team of researchers from the U.S., Switzerland, and Germany have identified the enormous foot as belonging to an animal related to Brachiosaurus, a member of the sauropod family — you know, the dinosaurs with the long necks and tails.
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Researchers estimate that "Elliot" -- a sauropod whose remains were discovered in Australia in 1999 -- measured up to 18 meters (59 feet) long and 3.5 metres (over 11 feet ) high at the hip and weighed up to 20 tonnes (22 short tons).
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Illustration: Jon Hoad/University of EdinburghThree years ago, the same team of researchers uncovered dino prints at a different location on the island, but in addition to sauropod tracks, the new prints also include so-called tridactyl tracks, or three-clawed footprints.
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Other dinosaurs on display include: a rearing Camarasaurus - one of the long-necked, four-legged sauropods; a 90-foot-long (27-meter-long) Diplodocus, another sauropod; a meat-eating Allosaurus sitting, guarding a nest of eggs; and the tank-like armored Euoplocephalus.
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Based on the fossils, the study's lead author Stephen Poropat, a sauropod specialist based at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Natural History Museum, estimates that Savannasaurus and Diamantinasaurus probably measured between 943 to 16 meters (around 40 to 50 feet) in length.
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"The name reflects the great size of the animal as well as the fact that its lineage appeared at the origins of sauropod dinosaurs," said Jonah Choiniere, study author and paleontology professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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This much we know: One day toward the end of the Jurassic Period, a long-necked, long-tailed sauropod dinosaur about the size of an elephant lumbered over a tidal flat in what is now Switzerland, leaving footprints wider than beach balls.
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"If we're looking for changes associated with growth in dinosaurs, the greatest degree of changes you see in growth are going to be in the animals that undergo the greatest size change from when they are born to when they die—and that's a sauropod," Woodruff said.
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"The discovery of Lingwulong pushes back the origination times of many of the groups of sauropod dinosaurs that we think of as most iconic, and challenges many conventional ideas about the early biogeographical history of dinosaurs," Philip Mannion, a study author and paleontologist at Imperial College London, told Gizmodo.
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A two-hour ride down a dirt road, far from cellphone service or any other signs of human life, Picketwire Canyon is a dinosaur lover's dream, largely because of hundreds of hubcap-size theropod and sauropod footprints pressed into a nearby layer of limestone, which abuts the river.
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In 1998, a single sauropod tooth was discovered by private fossil collector Holger Lüdtke in the now deactivated quarry. The sauropod tooth was the first specimen of a sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic of northern Germany.
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Shingopana was a quadrupedal Aeolosaurin sauropod that would have reached up to long when fully grown, smaller than the average sauropod.
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Yates, A.M. & Kitching, J. W. (2003). "The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion". Proc. R. Soc. Lond.: B Biol Sci.
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Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology e1732996. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2019.1732996 Yates, A.M. & Kitching, J.W. 2003. The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion.
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Wedel, M. (2009). "How big were the biggest sauropod trackmakers?" Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, 13 October 2009, updated 3 December 2009. Accessed 1 November 2010.
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The earliest known sauropod dinosaur and the first steps towards sauropod locomotion. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 270(1525):1753-1758.Yates, A.M. (2006).
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Hippolyte Baillière. 655 p. Cardiodon was the first sauropod given a formal name to, though Owen was at the time completely unaware of the sauropod nature of the find. Within a few decades, he and others were viewing Cardiodon as a possible synonym of his most well-known sauropod genus, Cetiosaurus.
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The Unspecified Sauropod resembles a Diplodocus. It was spotted feeding on leaves by the one of the soldiers from her binoculars. Stock footage from "100 Million BC" was used for the sauropod.
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Most known instances of preserved sauropod gastroliths are from Jurassic animals. The largest known gastroliths found in association with sauropod skeletons are approximately 10 centimeters in length.Martin, A.J. (2006). Introduction to the Study of Dinosaurs.
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As a sauropod, Aepisaurus would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.
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As a sauropod, it would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.
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Lessemsaurus is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur belonging to Lessemsauridae.
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As a sauropod, Chiayusaurus would have been a large, quadrupedal herbivore.
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Sauropod tracks near Rovereto, Italy Sauropod footprints. Sauropod trackways and other fossil footprints (known as "ichnites") are known from abundant evidence present on most continents. Ichnites have helped support other biological hypotheses about sauropods, including general fore and hind foot anatomy (see Limbs and feet above). Generally, prints from the forefeet are much smaller than the hind feet, and often crescent-shaped.
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It is a probable sauropod, with prosauropod-like teeth.Éric Buffetaut. 2005. A new sauropod dinosaur with prosauropod-like teeth from the Middle Jurassic of Madagascar. Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France, 176(5), 467-473.
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The vertebrae are around twenty centimetres long. If a brachiosaurid, Eucamerotus may have been around 15 m (49.2 ft) long, small for a sauropod. As any kind of sauropod, it would have been a quadrupedal herbivore.
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"Rearing Giants – kinetic-dynamic modeling of sauropod bipedal and tripodal poses." In Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. & Sander M. (eds): Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants. Life of the Past (series ed. Farlow, J.).
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"Nicksaurus" is an informally named Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous red muds of the Vitakri Formation of Sulaiman Basin, Pakistan. The dinosaur shared a habitat with other sauropod dinosaurs including Khetranisaurus, Sulaimanisaurus, Pakisaurus, Gspsaurus, Saraikimasoom, and Maojandino.
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It was earlier included under the Prosauropoda,Upchurch, P. (1998). "The phylogenetic relationships of sauropod dinosaurs". Zool. J. Linnean Soc. 124: 43-103 but more recently it has been suggested that Thecodontosaurus and its relatives preceded the prosauropod- sauropod split.
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He also studied dinosaur tracksMilàn, J., Christiansen, P., & Mateus, O. (2005). A three-dimensionally preserved sauropod manus impression from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal: implications for sauropod manus shape and locomotor mechanics. Kaupia, 14. and eggs, phytosaurs, chelonians, and whales.
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Reports of a surviving sauropod called the Mokele Mbembe or n'yamala emanate from here.
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Ornithopsis (meaning "bird-likeness") was a medium-sized Early Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur, from England.
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Jobaria is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Niger during the middle Jurassic Period, between 164–161 million years ago. Jobaria is currently the only known valid sauropod from the Tiouraren, where it was discovered in 1997.
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Living alongside it were turtles, dsungaripterid pterosaurs, and theropod, sauropod, stegosaurian, psittacosaurid, and ornithopod dinosaurs.
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Cardiodon (meaning "heart tooth", in reference to the shape) was a herbivorous genus of sauropod dinosaur, based on a tooth from the late Bathonian-age Middle Jurassic Forest Marble Formation of Wiltshire, England. Historically, it is very obscure and usually referred to Cetiosaurus, but recent analyses suggest that it is a distinct genus, and possibly related to Turiasaurus. Cardiodon was the first sauropod genus named.Taylor, Michael P., 2010, "Sauropod dinosaur research: a historical review", pp.
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Alcheringa 41, 543–580. and he is currently conducting research on other Cretaceous Queensland sauropod material curated at AAOD. He has been working extensively with Paul Upchurch (University College London) and Philip Mannion (Imperial College London) on a revision of Australia's Cretaceous sauropod fauna.
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Jiutaisaurus (meaning "Jiutai lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Quantou Formation of China. Jiutaisaurus was a sauropod which lived during the Cretaceous. The type species, Jiutaisaurus xidiensis, was described by Wu et al. in 2006, and is based on eighteen vertebrae.
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As Neosauropoda is a subgroup of Sauropoda, all members also display basic sauropod traits such as large size, long necks, and columnar legs.Wilson, Jeffreya. "Sauropod Dinosaur Phylogeny: Critique and Cladistic Analysis." Zool J Linn Soc Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 136.2 (2002): 215-75.
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Whichever genus it turns out to be, as a mamenchisaur- or omeisaur-like sauropod it would have been a large, quadrupedal herbivore with a long neck. It is regarded as a medium- to large-sized sauropod, with a length of around 15 meters (50 feet).
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Arkharavia was originally classified as a titanosauriform sauropod, thought to be related to Chubutisaurus, a sauropod from the Cretaceous of Argentina. However, further study showed that the referred vertebra in fact belonged to a hadrosaurid. The holotype vertebra is currently considered an indeterminate somphospondylan.
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Notocolossus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from late Cretaceous strata of Mendoza Province, Argentina.
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Mongolosaurus is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur which lived during the Early Cretaceous of China.
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The evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B 349:365-90.
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Papers in Palaeontology 1, 59–106. and in 2016 scientifically described one of Australia's most complete sauropod specimens as the new taxon Savannasaurus elliottorum. In 2016 Poropat also described the first sauropod skull ever recovered from Australia and referred it to Diamantinasaurus matildae; the braincase is currently on display at the AAOD Museum. More recently, Poropat published a revision of the holotype of Austrosaurus mckillopi, a sauropod from near Richmond,Poropat, S.F., Nair, J.P., Syme, C.E., Mannion, P.D., Upchurch, P., Hocknull, S.A., Cook, A.G., Tischler, T.R. & Holland, T., 2017. Reappraisal of Austrosaurus mckillopi Longman, 1933 from the Allaru Mudstone of Queensland, Australia’s first named Cretaceous sauropod dinosaur.
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"The evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 349: 365-390 However, an analysis by Jeffrey Wilson in 2002 indicated it had a very basal position within the Eusauropoda.J. A. Wilson. 2002. "Sauropod dinosaur phylogeny: critique and cladistic analysis".
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Chebsaurus is a genus of quadrupedal, herbivorous, cetiosaurid sauropod dinosaur, specifically a eusauropod. It lived in present-day Algeria, in the Callovian aged Aïssa Formation. The type species, C. algeriensis, was named in 2005 by Mahammed et al. and is the most complete Algerian sauropod known.
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Sauropod (fossil) tracks have been recorded from this formation.Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution." Pp. 517-607.
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Bothriospondylus ("excavated vertebra") is a dubious genus of neosauropod sauropod dinosaur. It lived during the Late Jurassic.
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The specific name is in honor of physicist and North American sauropod expert John "Jack" Stanton McIntosh.
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Traukutitan is a genus of possible titanosaur sauropod dinosaur which lived during the late Cretaceous (Santonian age).
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Publication of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Western Australian Museum. 42 pp. The fossil trackways at Broome include possibly the largest known dinosaur footprints, sauropod tracks upwards of long. It is suspected that the sauropod that made these tracks might have been tall at the hip.
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Footprints of a sauropod and a thyreophoran were reported from the Middle Jurassic Bagå Formation in 2005. Small dromaeosaur and indeterminate maniraptoran teeth from the Early Cretaceous Rabekke Formation were reported in 2008, and sauropod tracks were also reported from the formation that year. In 2011, footprints of a sauropod, a thyreophoran and a theropod were reported from the Bagå Formation. Lower Jurassic tracks reported form the Rønne Formation on Bornholm in 2014 are the earliest evidence of dinosaur activity in Denmark.
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Vulcanodon (meaning "volcano tooth") is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of southern Africa. The only known species is V. karibaensis. Discovered in 1969 in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe), it was regarded as the earliest-known sauropod for decades, and is still one of the most primitive sauropods that has been discovered. As a quadrupedal, ground- dwelling herbivore, Vulcanodon already showed the typical sauropod body plan with column-like legs and a long neck and tail.
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Bernardo Javier González Riga is an Argentinean paleontologist; he is internationally recognised for her research on sauropod dinosaur evolution, and was awarded in 2019. He has discovered in the Late Cretaceous strata of the Mendoza Province (Argentina) the huge sauropod dinosaur named Notocolossus, one of the largest land animal that ever found. He also described and co-described moren than 10 new dinosaur species. Paleontologist Bernardo Gonzalez Riga during the discovery of a new sauropod species, in Late Cretaceous of Argentina.
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Castle Story was the debut game developed by Sauropod Studio, an indie game developer based in Montreal, Canada. The game was first announced in December 2011; around this time, Sauropod was a team of two people. Sauropod Studio was formally founded as a company on 24 April 2012 by François Alain (general director), Germain Couet (artistic director), and Benoît Alain (lead programmer and chief technical officer). A crowdfunding campaign was launched through the website Kickstarter on 27 July 2012, seeking .
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Lourinhasaurus (meaning "Lourinhã lizard") was an herbivorous sauropod dinosaur genus dating from Late Jurassic strata of Estremadura, Portugal.
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Mamenchisauridae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs known from the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Asia and Africa.
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Small dromaeosaurid and indeterminate maniraptoran teeth have been uncovered in this formation. Sauropod tracks have also been found.
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Pilmatueia is a diplodocoid sauropod belonging to the family Dicraeosauridae that lived in Argentina during the Early Cretaceous.
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Tendaguria ( ; meaning "the Tendaguru one") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of Tanzania.
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Fossils of the sauropod Tangvayosaurus, another dinosaur from the Gres superieurs Formation, Savannakhet Dinosaur Museum Ichthyovenator is known from the Barremian to Cenomanian Grès supérieurs Formation, and was found in a layer probably dating to the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous period between 125 and 113 million years ago. It coexisted with other dinosaurs such as the sauropod Tangvayosaurus, and an indeterminate sauropod, iguanodontian, and neoceratopsian. Tracks of theropod, sauropod and ornithopod dinosaurs, as well as plant remains, are also known from the formation. Fossils of non- dinosaurian fauna are represented by ray-finned fish like Lanxangichthys and Lepidotes, as well as turtles including Shachemys, Xinjiangchelys, and an indeterminate carettochelyid and trionychid.
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A relatively primitive sauropod identified as a "cetiosaur" when first discovered in 1981, Atlasaurus appears to be closer to Brachiosaurus than to any other known sauropod based on detailed similarities between the vertebral column and limbs. However, more recent analyses have considered it to be a putative member of the Turiasauria.
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In 1999, a huge Cretaceous sauropod about 95 million years old was unearthed near Winton. It was dubbed "Elliot".
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72 In the end, however, finds of sauropod footprints in the 1930s put Hay and Tornier's theory to rest.
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Cathetosaurus as a valid sauropod genus and comparisons with Camarasaurus. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Program and Abstracts, 2013. 173.
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Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution." Pp. 517-607. The giant sauropod Turiasaurus is also known from the formation.
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Caudal vertebra of C. longus Cetiosaurus is, with the exception of the tooth genus Cardiodon, the first sauropod to be discovered and named as well as being the best known sauropod from England."Cetiosaurus." In: Dodson, Peter & Britt, Brooks & Carpenter, Kenneth & Forster, Catherine A. & Gillette, David D. & Norell, Mark A. & Olshevsky, George & Parrish, J. Michael & Weishampel, David B. The Age of Dinosaurs. Publications International, LTD. p. 65. . Numerous species have been assigned to Cetiosaurus over the years belonging to several different groups of sauropod dinosaurs.
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Wamweracaudia is a large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Tendaguru Formation of Tanzania, Africa, 155 million years ago.
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Liaoningotitan (meaning "Liaoning giant") is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod from the Early Cretaceous (Barremian) Yixian Formation in Liaoning, China.
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Karongasaurus (meaning "Karonga District" lizard) is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous. It was a titanosaurid sauropod. Its fossils, consisting solely of part of a lower mandible and a few teeth, were found in the Dinosaur Beds of Malawi. The type species, Karongasaurus gittelmani, was described by Elizabeth Gomani in 2005.
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Europasaurus is a basal macronarian sauropod, a form of quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur. It lived during the Late Jurassic (middle Kimmeridgian, about 154 million years ago) of northern Germany, and has been identified as an example of insular dwarfism resulting from the isolation of a sauropod population on an island within the Lower Saxony basin.
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Skeletal reconstruction of Lessemsaurus, a closely related genus of basal sauropod Restoration of Antetonitrus A cladistic analysis by Yates and Kitching recognizes Antetonitrus as a basal sauropod, occupying a position between more derived animals such as Isanosaurus or Vulcanodon, and more basal sauropods like Melanorosaurus. The back vertebrae are extremely similar to Lessemsaurus from South America, while the limb bones are similar to Blikanasaurus, another stocky early sauropod from South Africa. However, these animals were not included in a cladistic analysis with Antetonitrus because they are poorly known. Apaldetti et al.
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This mode of aquatic locomotion, combined with its instability, led Henderson to refer to sauropods in water as "tipsy punters". While sauropods could therefore not have been aquatic as historically depicted, there is evidence that they preferred wet and coastal habitats. Sauropod footprints are commonly found following coastlines or crossing floodplains, and sauropod fossils are often found in wet environments or intermingled with fossils of marine organisms. A good example of this would be the massive Jurassic sauropod trackways found in lagoon deposits on Scotland's Isle of Skye.
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Rugocaudia is a potentially dubious extinct genus of basal titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur known from the Early Cretaceous of Montana, United States.
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"A new diplodocoid sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Montana, USA." Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 49(2): 197–210.
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Tornieria ("for Tornier") is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur from Late Jurassic of Tanzania. It has a convoluted taxonomic history.
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The Denver Museum of Natural History opened a small Cedar Mountain Formation quarry that has produced diverse dinosaur fossils including theropod, sauropod and ornithopod. An adult sauropod was designated the type specimen of the genus Venenosaurus.Tidwell, V., Carpenter, K. & Meyer, S. 2001. New Titanosauriform (Sauropoda) from the Poison Strip Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation (Lower Cretaceous), Utah.
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An important characteristic of sauropod limbs is their reduced ossification – the tendency to replace bone by cartilage. Gongxianosaurus is the only known sauropod with ossified distal tarsals. Thus, either Gongxianosaurus was one of the basalmost sauropods, or ossified distal tarsals were present in other early sauropods but are simply not preserved due to the fragmentation of the specimens.
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Pelorosaurus ( ; meaning "monstrous lizard") is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur. Remains referred to Pelorosaurus date from the Early Cretaceous period, about 140-125 million years ago, and have been found in England and Portugal. Thomas Holtz estimated its length at 24 meters (79 feet). The name Pelorosaurus was one of the first to be given to any sauropod.
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Moabosaurus (meaning "Moab reptile") is a genus of turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah, United States.
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As a sauropod, Cardiodon would have been a large, quadrupedal herbivore, but because of the scanty remains, much more cannot be said.
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Natural cast of a sauropod hindfoot impression, probably left by Opisthocoelicaudia Footprints from the Nemegt Formation were unknown until 2003, when several examples had been described from the Nemegt locality by Currie and colleagues. Most of these footprints belonged to hadrosaurids (probably Saurolophus), while two have been left by a large theropod (probably Tarbosaurus) and yet another two by the hindfoot of a sauropod. The sauropod tracks were assigned to Opisthocoelicaudia, which, according to these authors, showed a matching hind foot morphology and was probably the only known sauropod (and, thus, the only potential trackmaker species) from the Nemegt Formation when Nemegtosaurus is regarded a synonym. The tracks were left in the soft and wet mud of shallow or freshly dried up points along a river and subsequently filled up with sand.
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Rebbachisauridae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs known from fragmentary fossil remains from the Cretaceous of South America, Africa, North America, and Europe.
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Turiasauria is an unranked clade of basal sauropod dinosaurs known from Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous deposits in Europe, North America, and Africa.
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Though important for the understanding of sauropod origin and early evolution, Isanosaurus is poorly known. Exact relationships to other early sauropods remain unresolved.
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S. Stumpf, J. Ansorge, and W. Krempien. 2015. Gravisaurian sauropod remains from the marine late Early Jurassic (Lower Toarcian) of North-Eastern Germany.
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Excavation started in the same month and led to the recovery of a wealth of fossils in an area of approximately 200 square meters. While most fossils pertain to a new sauropod genus, remains of theropods have also been found. The sauropod material includes four fragmentary to complete individuals similar in size, together encompassing most of the skeleton, though hand and skull bones were not found except a premaxilla and teeth. In 1998, the sauropod material was briefly described as a new genus and species, Gongxianosaurus shibeiensis, in a preliminary note by palaeontologists led by He Xinlu.
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The sauropod bones, not the iguanodont bones, would then have retained the name C. brevis. Therefore, Cetiosaurus conybeari is a junior objective synonym of C. brevis, that is, C. brevis is not only an older name, but one based on exactly the same fossils as the younger, invalid name. After 1850, more specimens continued to be assigned to both Pelorosaurus and Cetiosaurus, and both were studied and reported on extensively in the scientific literature. Slowly a tendency developed to subsume fragmentary sauropod material from the Jurassic of England under the designation Cetiosaurus, while assigning incomplete European Cretaceous sauropod finds to Pelorosaurus.
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Described as a robust sauropod, it was initially described as being closely related to Ligabuesaurus and Phuwiangosaurus, and Mannion et al. (2013) more precisely recovered it as a member of Somphospondyli.P. D. Mannion, P. Upchurch, R. N. Barnes and O. Mateus. 2013. Osteology of the Late Jurassic Portuguese sauropod dinosaur Lusotitan atalaiensis (Macronaria) and the evolutionary history of basal titanosauriforms.
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Abrosaurus was originally described as a camarasaurid sauropod, and while it may not turn out to be a member of that particular family, further research has indicated that it is a basal member of Macronaria, much like Camarasaurus itself. However, the remains of Abrosaurus have not been fully described, making its exact placement in the sauropod family tree difficult to determine.
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Initially, it was not clear if Kotasaurus represents a true sauropod or a basal sauropodomorph that has to be classified outside Sauropoda. Some paleontologists placed it inside a basal sauropod family called Vulcanodontidae though, together with Barapasaurus and the fragmentary Ohmdenosaurus and Zizhongosaurus. This grouping is now recognized to be paraphyletic. Today Kotasaurus is recognized as one of the most basal sauropods known.
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The Kirkwood Formation is the most fossil- rich formation of Late Jurassic - Early Cretaceous age known in South Africa. It has yielded disarticulated remains of theropod and ornithopod dinosaurs, and several sauropod species in which the Kirkwood is particularly rich. These species include undetermined Diplodocinae, Brachiosauridae, and Eusauropoda. One of the first sauropod species discovered in the Kirkwood was Algoasaurus.
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Austroposeidon is an extinct genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Presidente Prudente Formation of Brazil. It contains one species, Austroposeidon magnificus.
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Specimens of Limusaurus (along with other small animals) appear to have been mired in mud pits created by the footprints of giant sauropod dinosaurs.
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Mateus, O., & Tschopp E. (2013). Cathetosaurus as a valid sauropod genus and comparisons with Camarasaurus. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Program and Abstracts, 2013. 173.
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Isisaurus (named after the Indian Statistical Institute) is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period from what is now India.
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Two of these specimens had consecutive hindprints allowing the pace length to be measured. Sauropod tracks are also known from the same stratigraphic layer.
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Argyrosaurus ( ) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived about 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Argentina.
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Wilson, Jeffrey A., and Paul C. Sereno. "Early Evolution and Higher-Level Phylogeny of Sauropod Dinosaurs." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18.Sup002 (1998): 1-79.
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Also, they demonstrated that Cairanoolithus was not the eggs of an ornithopod or sauropod and conjectured that it could be the eggs of a nodosaur.
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Normanniasaurus ( Normannia lizard) is an extinct genus of basal titanosaur sauropod known from the Early Cretaceous (Albian stage) Poudingue Ferrugineux of Seine-Maritime, northwestern France.
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Yuanmousaurus ("Yuanmou lizard") was a sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic period of China. It is known from incomplete remains, recovered in 2000 from the Zhanghe Formation in Yuanmou County in Yunnan Province. Yuanmousaurus was a relatively large sauropod and may have reached about 17 meters (56 ft) in length. It was a basal member of the Sauropoda, but its exact systematic position is unclear.
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Baurutitan was a sauropod which was estimated to have measured long and had a height of around . The holotype specimen was found in the Marilia Formation, dating to the Maastrichtian epoch, some 72-66 million years ago. Baurutitan was the fourth sauropod described in Brazil, after Antarctosaurus, Gondwanatitan and Amazonsaurus. A 2017 cladistic analysis by José Carballido and colleagues places Baurutitan as a member of Lithostrotia.
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Angolatitan ("Angolan giant") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous and the first non-avian dinosaur discovered in Angola. Based on a forelimb, it was described in 2011 by Octávio Mateus and colleagues. The only species is Angolatitan adamastor. Angolatitan was a relict form of its time, being a basal titanosauriform sauropod in the Late Cretaceous, when more derived titanosaurs were far more common.
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After 100 million years of deposition, a new environment brought rise to a new formation, the sandstone Morrison Formation. The Morrison Formation contains some of the best fossils of the Late Jurassic. It is especially known for its sauropod tracks and sauropod bones among other dinosaur fossils. As identified by the fossil record, the environment was filled with various types of vegetation such as ferns and Zamites.
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It should not be confused with ?Bothriospondylus madagascariensis, a distinct taxon now named Vouivria, or another distinct primitive sauropod from the Isalo III Formation also tenatively called "Bothriospondylus" madagascarensis. Age determination studies performed using growth ring counts suggest that this sauropod took 31–45 years to reach sexual maturity and was relatively fast-growing given the presence of a large amount of fibrolamellar bone.
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However, more recent taphonomic and sedimentological evidence suggests that sauropods did not use stones for digestion due to the general rarity of finding gastric mill-like stones with sauropod remains, and low relative mass of the stones to the size of sauropod bodies. When gastrolith-like rocks are found with sauropods, it may be that they were accidentally ingested, or intentionally ingested for mineral uptake.
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Cetiosaurus () meaning 'whale lizard', from the Greek keteios/κήτειος meaning 'sea monster' (later, 'whale') and sauros/σαυρος meaning 'lizard', is a herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Period, living about 167 million years ago in what is now Europe. Cetiosaurus was in 1842 the first sauropod from which bones were described and is the most complete sauropod found in England. It was so named because its describer, Sir Richard Owen, supposed it was a marine creature, initially an extremely large crocodile, and did not recognise it for a land-dwelling dinosaur. Because of the early description many species would be named in the genus, eventually eighteen of them.
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Sauropod bones and trackways had long been known from the Paluxy River area of Texas, usually referred to the genus Pleurocoelus, including partial skeletons (particularly from the Glen Rose Formation, above the Twin Mountains Formation). In the mid 1980s, students from the University of Texas at Austin discovered a bonebed on a ranch in Hood County, but early work stopped in 1987. The quarry was reopened in 1993 and was subsequently worked by parties from Southern Methodist University, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, and Tarleton State University. All sauropod remains from this bonebed appear to come from the same genus of sauropod.
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Analong (meaning "Ana dragon") is a genus of mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Chuanjie Formation in Yunnan, China. The type and only species is Analong chuanjieensis.
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Jiangshanosaurus is a genus of herbivorous titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur that lived in China approximately 105 million years ago, during the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous.
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Lapparentosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. Its fossils were found in Madagascar (Isalo III Formation). The type species is L. madagascariensis.
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Vahiny is an extinct genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of the Maevarano Formation, northwestern Madagascar. It contains a single species, Vahiny depereti.
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Brasilotitan (meaning "Brazil giant") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (early Maastrichtian) Adamantina Formation of Brazil. The type species is Brasilotitan nemophagus.
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Age of Jurassic basal sauropods in Sichuan, China: A reappraisal of basal sauropod evolution. GSA Bulletin. 130 (9–10): 1493–1500. doi:10.1130/B31910.1. ISSN 0016-7606.
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Quetecsaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of the southern Mendoza Province, western Argentina. It contains a single species, Quetecsaurus rusconii.
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Paul, G.S. (2010). The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press.Young, C.C. (1954), On a new sauropod from Yiping, Szechuan, China. sinica, III(4), 481-514.
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Mansourasaurus ("Mansoura lizard") is a genus of herbivorous lithostrotian sauropod dinosaur from the Quseir Formation of Egypt. The type and only species is Mansourasaurus shahinae. The discovery of Mansourasaurus was considered quite significant by paleontologists, because very few Late Cretaceous sauropod remains had been found in Africa where the rocky strata that preserve remains elsewhere and produce rich fossil beds were typically not found exposed at or near ground level.
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Magyarosaurus ("Magyar lizard") is a genus of dwarf sauropod dinosaur from late Cretaceous Period (early to late Maastrichtian) in Romania. It is one of the smallest-known adult sauropods, measuring only six meters in length. The type and only certain species is Magyarosaurus dacus. It has been found to be a close relative of Rapetosaurus in the family Saltasauridae in the sauropod clade Titanosauria in a 2005 study.
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Schwarz, D., Wings, O., & Meyer, C.A. 2007. "Super sizing the giants: first cartilage preservation at a sauropod limb joint". Journal of the Geological Society, 164: 61–65 In 2020, Daniela Schwarz, Philip D. Mannion, Oliver Wings and Christian A. Meyer gave it the genus name Amanzia, after Swiss geologist Amanz Gressly who was the first to discover dinosaur bones in Switzerland. Amanzia is itself the first sauropod named from Swiss remains.
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Restoration The Late Cretaceous titanosauriform sauropod Huabeisaurus is known from teeth and much of the postcranial skeleton. Its completeness makes it an important taxon for integrating and interpreting anatomical observations from more fragmentary Cretaceous East Asian sauropods and for understanding titanosauriform evolution in general. Measuring in total length, Huabeisaurus is large when compared to most dinosaurs, but by sauropod standards, it was only midsized. It had a hip height of .
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The sauropod Huabeisaurus was excavated from Upper Cretaceous sediments of the province of Shanxi, in northeast China. The skeleton was recovered in the 1990s. The holotype of Huabeisaurus is a partially articulated individual composed of teeth, cervical, dorsal, sacral, and caudal vertebrae, ribs, complete pectoral and pelvic girdles, and nearly complete limbs. Due to its relative completeness, Huabeisaurus represents a significant taxon for understanding sauropod evolution in Asia.
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In 2002, a Belgian-Romanian expedition uncovered a sauropod skeleton in the bed of the river Râul Mare, at Nǎlaț-Vad. It was at the time the most complete sauropod skeleton ever discovered in Romania. In 2010, the type species Paludititan nalatzensis was named and described by Zoltán Csiki, Vlad Codrea, Cǎtǎlin Jipa-Murzea and Pascal Godefroit. The generic name is derived from Latin palus, "marsh" and Greek Titan.
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Journal of South American Earth Sciences 22(2): 116-129. Amargasuchus inhabited a terrestrial paleoenvironment that existed during the Early Cretaceous in the Neuquén basin that was characterized by a system of braided rivers, lakes, and alluvial plains. Sauropod, abelisauroid, and stegosaurian dinosaurs have also been found existing in the Neuquén basin at this time. The holotype was discovered in 1984 in association with the dicraeosaurid sauropod dinosaur Amargasaurus'.
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It was not analyzed and provisionally considered to represent an indeterminate sauropod, until such time that it could be relocated in the collections of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Only four out of the five sacral vertebrae are preserved. The total original length was in 1960 estimated at , compared to with B. altithorax. This would make it larger than any other sauropod sacrum ever found, except those of Argentinosaurus and Apatosaurus.
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Raath, J. S. (1987). Sauropod dinosaurs from the Central Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe, and the age of the Kadzi Formation. South African Journal of Geology, 90(2), 107-119.
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Angolatitans habitat would have been desert-like. Presumably, this sauropod would have been well adapted to very dry conditions as it is the case with today's desert elephants.
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Jaime Eduardo Powell (January 13, 1953 – February 1, 2016) was an Argentine paleontologist who described the titanosaur sauropod dinosaur taxa Aeolosaurus and found evidence that titanosaurs that osteoderms.
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Tataouinea is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur in the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae of Rebbachisauridae which lived in the Early Cretaceous Tunisia. Only one species, T. hannibalis, is known.
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Abydosaurus (meaning "Abydos lizard") is a genus of brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur known from skull and postcranial material found in upper Lower Cretaceous rocks of northeastern Utah, United States.
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Lhuyd was responsible for the first scientific description and naming of what we would now recognize as a dinosaur: the sauropod tooth Rutellum implicatum (Delair and Sarjeant, 2002).
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In the Elrhaz Formation, dinosaurs that lived with Eocarcharia include theropods Kryptops palaios and Suchomimus tenerensis, sauropod Nigersaurus taqueti, and ornithopods Ouranosaurus nigeriensis, Lurdusaurus arenatus, and Elrhazosaurus nigeriensis.
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Osteology of the Late Jurassic Portuguese sauropod dinosaur Lusotitan atalaiensis (Macronaria) and the evolutionary history of basal titanosauriforms. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 168(1), 98-206.
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4: e2054. . PMC 4906671. .J. O. Calvo, B. J. González Riga, and J. D. Porfiri. 2007. A new titanosaur sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina.
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"Sauropod dinosaur research: a historical review". In Richard Moody, Eric Buffetaut, David M. Martill and Darren Naish (eds.), Dinosaurs (and other extinct saurians): a historical perspective. HTML abstract.
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While mustering sheep in March 2005, David Elliott discovered a new dinosaur site on Belmont and a subsequent dig in September uncovered the remains of one of Australia's most complete sauropod skeletons. A total of 17 pallets of fossil bones trapped in a fine siltstone rock were recovered and stored in the Belmont shed. The dinosaur was nicknamed "Wade", in posthumous honour of Australian Palaeontologist Dr Mary Wade who died during the dig. In late 2005, the discovery of a partial sauropod humerus on Elderslie Station, near Winton, led to a series of digs held by the AAOD Museum and the recovery of two dinosaur skeletons preserved together, one being a sauropod skeleton and the other a theropod.
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Paleoenvironment restoration of a young diplodocid feeding on ferns The Morrison Formation environment in which Amphicoelias lived would have resembled a modern savanna, though since grass did not appear until the Late Cretaceous, ferns were probably the dominant plant and main food source for Amphicoelias. Though Engelmann et al. (2004) dismissed ferns as a sauropod food source due to their relatively low caloric content, Carpenter argued that the sauropod digestive system, well adapted to handle low-quality food, allows for the consumption of ferns as a large part of the sauropod diet. Carpenter also noted that the occasional presence of large petrified logs indicate the presence of tall trees, which would seem to conflict with the savanna comparison.
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The sauropod fossil today known as Cetiosauriscus stewarti was discovered in May 1898 by clay workers in the area around Fletton to the south of Peterborough and east of the Great Northern Railway. Pits in this region expose the fossil-rich sedimentary rocks of the marine Oxford Clay, which is of middle Callovian age and today regarded as one of the classic geological formations of British palaeontology. The sauropod fossil possibly stems from NPBCL pit No.1, which was the northernmost pit operated by the New Peterborough Brick Company Limited, and which produced the most vertebrate fossils. The discovery was brought to the attention of Leeds, who, after excavation, took the sauropod specimen to Eyebury, the Leeds' family home.
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"Atlasaurus imelakei n.g., n.sp., a brachiosaurid-like sauropod from the Middle Jurassic of Morocco." Les Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences IIa: Earth and Planetary Sciences. 1999:519-526.
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Yongjinglong is an extinct genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur known from the Early Cretaceous of Lanzhou-Minhe Basin of Gansu Province, China. It contains a single species, Yongjinglong datangi.
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Huanghetitan (meaning "Yellow River titan"), is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period. It was a basal titanosauriform which lived in what is now Gansu, China.
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Pelorosaurus thus came to be a typical wastebasket taxon for any European sauropod of this period. However, in recent years much work has been done to rectify the confusion.
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Despite being rich in dinosaur fossils, the only other sauropod from this rock unit is Nemegtosaurus, which is known from a single skull. Since the skull of Opisthocoelicaudia remains unknown, several researchers have suggested that Nemegtosaurus and Opisthocoelicaudia may represent the same species. Sauropod footprints from the Nemegt Formation, which include skin impressions, can probably be referred to either Nemegtosaurus or Opisthocoelicaudia as these are the only known sauropods from this formation.
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A new transitional sauropodomorph from the Early Jurassic of South Africa and the evolution of sauropod feeding and quadrupedalism. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, B: which has garnered international media attention and should serve to illuminate the early beginnings of sauropod gigantism. He is a co-discoverer of an early "prosauropod" Arcusaurus pereirabdalorum Yates, A.M., Bonnan, M.F., and Neveling, J. 2011. A new basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of South Africa.
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The largest of the four preserved bones is the dorsal vertebra, which at wide is the broadest known vertebra of any sauropod. The Cerro Fortaleza Formation is of uncertain age, due to the inconsistency of stratigraphic nomenclature in Patagonia. When Puertasaurus was alive, the Cerro Fortaleza Formation would have been a humid, forested landscape. Puertasaurus would have shared its habitat with other dinosaurs, including another large sauropod, Dreadnoughtus, in addition to other reptiles and fish.
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Saltasaurus (which means "lizard from Salta") is a genus of titanosaurid sauropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous Period of Argentina. Small among sauropods, though still heavy by the standards of modern creatures, Saltasaurus was characterized by a short neck and stubby limbs. It was the first genus of sauropod known to possess armour of bony plates embedded in its skin. Such small bony plates, called osteoderms, have since been found on other titanosaurids.
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Bruhathkayosaurus (; meaning "huge-bodied lizard") is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur found in the Kallemedu Formation of India. The fragmentary remains were originally described as a theropod but later publications listed it as a sauropod. Estimates by researchers exceed those of the titanosaur Argentinosaurus, as longer than and weighing over 80 tons. All the estimates are based on the dimensions of the fossils described in Yadagiri and Ayyasami's 1987 paper, which announced the find.
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Choconsaurus is an extinct genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur belonging to the group Titanosauriformes, which lived in the area of present-day Argentina at the end of the Cretaceous.Simón et al., 2017 The fossil remains were found in Villa El Chocón in Neuquén province, where the skeleton of a sauropod was reported. In 2017, the species type Choconsaurus baileywillisi was named and described by Edith Simón, Leonardo Salgado and Jorge Orlando Calvo.
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Castle Story was made publicly available as a paid early access game through the digital distribution platform Steam on 23 September 2013. The game was fully released on 17 August 2017 for Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows, with Sauropod shifting to bugfixes and developing post- launch content. Following onto the release of Castle Story, Sauropod began production on a second game, Mirador. This game had a troubled development, frequently shuffling the designer position.
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As a sauropod, it would have been a quadrupedal herbivore.Upchurch, P.M., Barrett, P.M., and Dodson, P. (2004). "Sauropoda", pp. 259–322 in Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.).
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As the archetypal sauropod, Brontosaurus is one of the best-known dinosaurs and has been featured in film, advertising, and postage stamps, as well as many other types of media.
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Katepensaurus is an extinct genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous of south-central Chubut Province of central Patagonia, Argentina. It contains a single species, Katepensaurus goicoecheai.
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Elizabeth M Gomani. Sauropod Dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of Malawi, Africa. Palaeontologia Electronica (2005) Volume: 8, Issue: 1, Pages: 37pp. Karongasaurus is the first dinosaur discovery published solely online.
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As a sauropod, Wamweracaudia would have been a quadrupedal herbivore.Upchurch, P.M., Barrett, P.M., and Dodson, P. (2004). "Sauropoda", pp. 259–322 in Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.).
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Lavocatisaurus (meaning "René Lavocat's lizard") is a genus of sauropod in the family Rebbachisauridae from the Early Cretaceous (Aptian to Albian) Rayoso Formation of the Neuquén Basin, northern Patagonia, Argentina.
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Atlasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs from Middle Jurassic (Bathonian to Callovian stages) beds in North Africa.M. Monbaron, D. A. Russell, and P. Taquet. (1999). Atlasaurus imelakei n.g., n.sp.
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The metatarsus in eusauropods is less than a quarter of their tibial length, unlike sauropod outgroups that have long hindlimbs and metatarsus that are almost half of their tibial length.
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Paludititan is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur which lived in the area of present Romania during the Late Cretaceous. It existed in the island ecosystem known as Hațeg Island.
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The Paleontological Society, Department of Geological Sciences, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville. the sauropod Bothriospondylus madagascariensis 43 years,Ricqles et al., (1983)In Skeletal Biomineralization: Patterns, Processes, and Evolutionary Trends (J.
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Pp. 574-588. .Lehman, T. M. and A. B. Coulson. 2002. A juvenile specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis from the Upper Cretaceous of Big Bend National Park,Texas.
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Its fossils were originally described as plesiosaur remains, until a revision of the holotype in 1978 identified them as sauropod fossils. It is the only dinosaur identified from the Posidonia Shale.
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Leonerasaurus was a small non-sauropod sauropodomorph, showing an unusual combination of basal and derived characters. This indicates that the evolution of early sauropodomorphs witnessed a great degree of convergent evolution.
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The genus is characterized by the dimension and shape of the neural spine of the proximal caudal vertebrae.Ruiz-Omeñaca, Jose Ignacio (2001). "Losillasaurus giganteus, a new Spanish sauropod". Dinosaur Mailing List.
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Pellegrinisaurus (meaning Lizard from Pelligrini) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period. The holotype was found in the Allen Formation, Argentina.
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Geobios, 18(5), 671-676.Buffetaut, E., Suteethorn, V., Cuny, G., Tong, H., Le Loeuff, J., Khansubha, S., & Jongautchariyakul, S. (2000). The earliest known sauropod dinosaur. Nature, 407(6800), 72-74.
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Vulcanodon is now known to be a true sauropod. Upon the discovery of the related Tazoudasaurus, both animals were unified in the family Vulcanodontidae, though this has not been universally accepted.
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The Gansu dinosaur trackway located in the Liujiazia National Dinosaur Geopark in Yanguoxia, China contains hundreds of tracks including 245 dinosaur, 350 theropod, 364 sauropod and 628 ornithopod tracks among others.
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Barrett, P M. 1999. A sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Lufeng Formation (Lower Jurassic) of Yunnan Province, People's Republic of China. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19(4):785-787.Dong, 1992.
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Sauroposeidon ( ; meaning "lizard earthquake god", after the Greek god PoseidonAccording to Wedel et al. (2005), the etymology of the name is based on Poseidon's association with earthquakes, not the sea.) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur known from several incomplete specimens including a bone bed and fossilized trackways that have been found in the American states of Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Texas. The fossils were found in rocks dating from near the end of the Early Cretaceous (Aptian–early Albian), a time when sauropod diversity in North America had greatly diminished. It was the last known North American sauropod prior to an absence of the group on the continent of roughly 40 million years that ended with the appearance of Alamosaurus during the Maastrichtian.
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After he visited the Purgatoire tracksite in Colorado he noticed that the local sauropod tracks resembled the "potholes" seen at the Briar site in Arkansas. Pittman later performed an aerial survey and found evidence for 10 parallel sauropod trackways on a rock surface that had also been extensively "trampled". The Briar quarry has two separate surfaces that each preserve thousands of dinosaur tracks. The operations of the quarry continue to both uncover and destroy dinosaur footprints.
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It is especially known for its sauropod tracks and sauropod bones among other dinosaur fossils. As identified by the fossil record, the environment was filled with various types of vegetation such as ferns and zamites. Related site: Dinosaur Ridge, the roadcut at the Interstate 70 Morrison exit ;Dakota Sandstone rightDakota Sandstone, formed during the Cretaceous period 70-100 million years ago, was deposited 100 million years ago towards Colorado's eastern coast. It shows evidence of ferns, and dinosaur tracks.
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Amargasaurus (; "La Amarga lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous epoch (129.4–122.46 mya) of what is now Argentina. The only known skeleton was discovered in 1984 and is virtually complete, including a fragmentary skull, making Amargasaurus one of the best-known sauropods of its epoch. Amargasaurus was first described in 1991 and contains a single known species, Amargasaurus cazaui. It was a large animal, but small for a sauropod, reaching in length.
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Life restoration of Amargasaurus Amargasaurus was small for a sauropod, measuring in length and weighing approximately . It followed the typical sauropod body plan, with a long tail and neck, a small head, and a barrel-shaped trunk supported by four column- like legs. The neck of Amargasaurus was shorter than in most other sauropods, a common trait within the Dicraeosauridae. Measuring in length, the neck corresponded to 136% of the length of the dorsal vertebral column.
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It cannot be identified whether the footprints of the herd were caused by juveniles or adults, because of the lack of previous trackway individual age identification. A sauropod trackway. Generally, sauropod trackways are divided into three categories based on the distance between opposite limbs: narrow gauge, medium gauge, and wide gauge. The gauge of the trackway can help determine how wide-set the limbs of various sauropods were and how this may have impacted the way they walked.
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Lohuecotitan is an extinct genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous in Spain. The only species known in the genus is Lohuecotitan pandafilandi, described and named in 2016..
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Zizhongosaurus (meaning "Zizhong lizard") is a genus of basal herbivorous sauropod dinosaur which lived in the Early Jurassic Period of China. It was a large-bodied herbivore characterized by a long neck.
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The total original length was in 1960 estimated at , compared to with B. altithorax. This would make it larger than any other sauropod sacrum ever found, except those of Argentinosaurus and Apatosaurus.
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He has authored papers naming Aquilops (2014), Brontomerus (2011), and Sauroposeidon (2000). Along with paleontologists Darren Naish and Mike P. Taylor, he founded the paleontology blog Sauropod Vertebrae Picture of the Week.
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Amargatitanis (meaning "Amarga giant") is a genus of dicraeosaurid sauropod dinosaur (a type of large, long-necked quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur) from the Barremian-age (Lower Cretaceous) La Amarga Formation of Neuquén, Argentina.
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H. C. T'an. 1923. New research on the Mesozoic and early Tertiary geology in Shantung. Geological Survey of China Bulletin 5:95-135 Unlike most sauropod specimens, it has a relatively complete skull.
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Epachthosaurus (meaning "heavy lizard") was a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous. It was a lithostrotian titanosaur. Its fossils have been found in Central and Northern Patagonia in South America.
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Eomamenchisaurus (meaning "dawn Mamenchisaurus") is a genus of mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of Yuanmou, Yunnan, China. The type species is E. yuanmouensis, described by Lü Junchang et al. in 2008.
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Rapetosaurus krausei, another dinosaur from Madagascar, is named in his honor.Curry Rogers, K., & Forster, C. A. (2001). The last of the dinosaur titans: a new sauropod from Madagascar. Nature, 412(6846), 530–534.
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Together with the brachiosaurids and relatives, titanosaurians make up the larger sauropod clade Titanosauriformes. Titanosaurs have long been a poorly-known group, and the relationships between titanosaur species are still not well-understood.
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Eucamerotus (meaning "well-chambered" in reference to the hollows of the vertebrae) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Barremian-age Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation (Wealden) of the Isle of Wight, England.
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Mannion, P.D.; Upchurch, P.; Jin, X.; Zheng, W. (2019). New information on the Cretaceous sauropod dinosaurs of Zhejiang Province, China: impact on Laurasian titanosauriform phylogeny and biogeography. Royal Society Open Science. 6 (8). .
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Clasmodosaurus (meaning "fragmentary tooth reptile") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Bajo Barreal Formation."63.2 Provincia de Chubut, Argentina; 2. Bajo Barreal Formation," in Weishampel, et al. (2004). Page 602.
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Barrett PM, Hasegawa Y, Manabe M, Isaji S, Matsuoka H. 2002. Sauropod dinosaurs from the Lower Cretaceous of eastern Asia: taxonomic and biogeographical implications. Palaeontology 45: 1197–1217.Azuma Y, Tomida Y. 1998.
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Elaltitan is an extinct genus of large lithostrotian titanosaur sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous (mid Cenomanian to Turonian stage) of Chubut Province, southern Argentina. It contains a single species, Elaltitan lilloi.
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The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, such as Apatosaurus, Barosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Camarasaurus. Its great size may have been a deterrent to the predators Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus: their remains have been found in the same strata, which suggests that they coexisted with Diplodocus. Diplodocus is among the most easily identifiable dinosaurs, with its typical sauropod shape, long neck and tail, and four sturdy legs. For many years, it was the longest dinosaur known.
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Earlier estimates that the prints were only wide, no larger than the feet of Diplodocus, have since been shown to be incorrect.Comments on Wedel, M. (2009) Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week Sauropod Art-O-Rama, 17 November 2009 In 2020 Molina-Pérez and Larramendi suggested that the narrow- gauge track, the position of the claws, and the era all indicate that it belonged to an enormous diplodocoid, and estimated its size at 33.5 meters (110 ft) and 62 tonnes (68.3 short tons).
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José Bonaparte originally described Neosauropoda as comprising members of four sauropod groups: Dicraeosauridae, Diplodocidae, Camarasauridae, and Brachiosauridae. Upchurch's 1995 paper on sauropod phylogeny proposed the current definition for Diplodocoidea, which was then classified as a subgroup of Titanosauridae. Cetiosaurus was linked to Neosauropoda by a trichotomy, as the genus’ fragmentary and often dubious description meant that it could be placed as a sister taxon to the Titanosauridae-Diplodocoidae clade, the Brachiosauridae- Camarasauridae clade, or Neosauropoda as a whole.Upchurch P. 1995.
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Ultrasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur discovered by Haang Mook Kim in South Korea. However, the name was first used unofficially (as a nomen nudum) in 1979 by Jim Jensen to describe a set of giant dinosaur bones he discovered in the United States. Because Kim published the name for his specimen before Jensen could do so officially, Jensen renamed his specimen Ultrasauros. Jensen's giant sauropod was later found to be a chimera, and the type remains are now assigned to Supersaurus.
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Motorized vehicle access is restricted to tours conducted by the US Forest Service.US Forest Service, Picket Wire Canyonlands - guided auto tour general information In 2001, the first discoveries in the Picketwire Canyonlands area were made of related fossil dinosaur bones. Fieldwork has continued each year on recovery of the massive bones of a sauropod (brontosaur) skeleton. The project has been supported by volunteers and the Sternberg Museum of Natural History of western Kansas.Bruce A. Schumacher, “To Resurrect a Brontosaur”: Picketwire Canyonlands Sauropod Excavation .
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Widely known as a classical exposure among geologists, the quarry had been extensively studied, and visited by students of geology for decades. Although rich in fossils of marine invertebrates, fossils of land-living animals had been rare. The sauropod tooth was the first specimen of a sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic of northern Germany. After more fossil material was found, including bones, excavation of the bone-bearing layer commenced in April 1999, conducted by a local association of private fossil collectors.
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The humerus is long,Ruiz-Omeñaca, Jose Ignacio (2001)."Re: Losillasaurus giganteus, a new Spanish sauropod". Dinosaur Mailing List. which despite being from a subadult specimen is within 20% of the size of Paralititan.
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The Higueruelas (Spanish) or Higuerueles Formation (Catalan) is a Tithonian geologic formation in the Teruel and Valencia provinces of Spain.Higueruelas Formation at Fossilworks.org Fossil sauropod tracks have been reported from the formation.Weishampel et al.
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Carpenter, K. (2006). "Biggest of the big: a critical re-evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus." In Foster, J.R. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation.
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Austrosaurus (meaning "Southern lizard") was an extinct genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Allaru Formation and Winton Formation, from the early Cretaceous (110-105 million years ago) of Central-Western Queensland in Australia.
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Bonaparte, J.F. 1998. An armoured sauropod from the Aptian of northern Patagonia, Argentina. In: Tomida, Y., Rich, T. H. & Vickers-Rich, P. (Eds.). Second Symposium Gondwana Dinosaurs, 12–13 July 1998, Abstracts with Program.
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Turiasaurus (meaning "Turia lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs. It is known from a single fossil specimen representing the species Turiasaurus riodevensis, found in the Kimmeridgian Villar del Arzobispo Formation of Teruel, Spain.
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Ruyangosaurus (Ruyang County lizard) is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur recovered from the Early Cretaceous Haoling Formation of China. The type species is R. giganteus, described in 2009 by Lü Junchang et al.
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The Tilougguit Formation, also known as the Tillouguit Formation, is an Early Bathonian geologic formation in Morocco. An indeterminate sauropod is known from the formation Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution." Pp. 517-607.
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Averianov, A. O., Voronkevich, A. V., Maschenko, E. N., Leshchinskiy, S. V. and Fayngertz, A. V. (2002). A sauropod foot from the Early Cretaceous of Western Siberia, Russia. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 47(1):117–124.
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Atacamatitan (meaning "Atacama Desert titan") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period. The holotype specimen makes Atacamatitan one of the most complete titanosaurs from Chile.
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Amanzia (after Swiss geologist Amanz Gressly) is a genus of turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Reuchenette Formation in Moutier, Switzerland. The type and only species is Amanzia greppini, originally named as a species of Ornithopsis.
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While working for Marsh, he also discovered the type species of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus,Marsh, 1878. and the theropod dinosaur Allosaurus, with his protégé Samuel Wendell Williston.Marsh, 1877.A Short History of Dinosaur Collecting.
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Alan the Dinosaur is the name given to an unidentified Sauropodomorph fossil, found in Whitby in 1995, regarded as the oldest sauropod dinosaur found in the United Kingdom. It is now in the Yorkshire Museum.
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The vertebral spines of Ichthyovenators tail were unusually tall, suggesting—as in today's crocodilians—the tail may have aided in swimming. Ichthyovenator lived alongside sauropod and ornithopod dinosaurs, as well as bivalves, fish and turtles.
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For example, longevity estimates for the sauropod Hypselosaurus priscus range from a few decades to several hundred years.Case, T. J. (1978). Speculations on the growth rate and reproduction of some dinosaurs. Paleobiology 4, 320-328.
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Klamelisaurus (meaning "Kelameili Mountains lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Shishugou Formation of China. The type species is Klamelisaurus gobiensis, which was named by Zhao Xijin in 1993, based on a partial skeleton discovered in 1982 near the abandoned town of Jiangjunmiao. Zhao described Klamelisaurus as the only member of a new subfamily, Klamelisauridae, among the now-defunct primitive sauropod order Bothrosauropodoidea. Since Zhao's description, Klamelisaurus received limited attention from researchers until Andrew Moore and colleagues redescribed it in 2020.
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Overosaurus (meaning "Overo lizard", after the Cerro Overo locality) is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaurs, containing only a single species, Overosaurus paradasorum. This species lived approximately 86 to 84 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous Period in what is now Patagonia (in southern Argentina). Overosaurus paradasorum was relatively small compared to other sauropods from Patagonia, like the saltasaurids and other aeolosaurines. It was a ground-dwelling herbivore, relatively small for a sauropod, with a length estimated as approximately long.
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In the spring of 2008, Dr. Bonnan was involved with a new Morrison Formation dinosaur quarry in Hanksville, Utah. His expertise in the concentration of Sauropod dinosaurs metapodials (and/or caudal vertebrae) a were sought after by and aided the excavation efforts of the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dr. Bonnan continues to assist the Burpee Museum in excavating the Hanksville-Burpee site. He is also a co-discoverer of the almost-sauropod Aardonyx celestae Yates, A.M., Bonnan, M.F., Neveling, J., Chinsamy, A., and Blackbeard, M. 2009.
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The sauropod fauna of the La Amarga Formation was diverse and included the basal rebbachisaurid Zapalasaurus, the dicraeosaurid Amargatitanis, and unnamed remains of basal titanosauriforms. The high diversity suggests that different sauropod species exploited different food sources in order to reduce competition. Basal Titanosauriforms showed proportionally longer necks, longer forelimbs, and broader tooth crowns than Dicraeosaurids and Rebbachisaurids, suggesting greater feeding heights. Amargasaurus probably fed above ground level at heights of up to , as evidenced by the anatomy of its neck and inner ear.
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Cetiosauriscus ( ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 166 and 164 million years ago during the Callovian (Middle Jurassic Period) in what is now England. A herbivore, Cetiosauriscus had—for sauropod standards—a moderately long tail, and longer forelimbs, making them as long as its hindlimbs. It has been estimated as about long and between in weight. The only known fossil that was later named Cetiosauriscus includes most of the rear half of a skeleton as well as a hindlimb (NHMUK R3078).
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In 1980, geologist Francisco E. Nullo noticed the presence of sauropod bones on a hillside of the Estancia Alta Vista, south of the Centinela River in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. He reported these finds to then-prominent paleontologist José Bonaparte. Bonaparte dug up a large sauropod cervical vertebra in 1981. The old site was relocated and new excavations were carried out between 13 and 17 January and 14 to 19 March 2019, and a new site was discovered on the Estancia La Anita.
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The Galve fossils are significant in including istiodactylid pterosaurs, heterodontosaurids and spinosaurines. In 2007, Naish co-authored the description of the new sauropod Xenoposeidon with fellow Portsmouth-based palaeontologist Mike P. Taylor. In 2008 he published an evaluation of azhdarchid pterosaurs with Mark Witton, in which they argued that azhdarchids were stork- or ground hornbill-like generalists, foraging in diverse environments for small animals and carrion. Along with his colleagues Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel he published a paper on sauropod neck posture in 2008.
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Clasmodosaurus was named by Florentino Ameghino in 1898, but remained largely unknown for decades after its discovery. It was originally considered a sauropod, but Friedrich von Huene suggested that it could be a coelurosaur or synonymous with Loncosaurus, which he considered to be a carnosaur. Like Loncosaurus, its taxonomy remained unclear with it regarded as a theropod on the rare occasions it was mentioned. However, Jaime Powell suggested that it was a dubious genus of sauropod in 1986, an identification which has been accepted since.
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Brontomerus (from Greek bronte meaning "thunder", and merós meaning "thigh") is a possibly dubious genus of camarasauromorph sauropod which lived during the early Cretaceous (Aptian or Albian age, approximately 110 million years ago). It was named in 2011 and the type species is Brontomerus mcintoshi. It is probably a fairly basal camarasauromorph, though the taxon is difficult to resolve due to incompleteness of the material. It is most remarkable for its unusual hipbones, which would have supported the largest thigh muscles, proportionally, of any known sauropod.
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Despite these theories, the actual data on the ilium and its powerful muscles indicates only that the animal was "unusually athletic for a sauropod", and there is minimal speculation that Brontomerus may have been predatory and would require extra power in locomotion to feed; it would be the first carnivore among any sauropod discovered. The authors acknowledge that while the unusual qualities of the hipbone probably have some functional significance, it is difficult to assess without further information about the pelvis, femora and proximal caudals.
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However, this and other early studies of sauropod ecology were flawed in that they ignored a substantial body of evidence that the bodies of sauropods were heavily permeated with air sacs. In 1878, paleontologist E.D. Cope had even referred to these structures as "floats". Beginning in the 1970s, the effects of sauropod air sacs on their supposed aquatic lifestyle began to be explored. Paleontologists such as Coombs and Bakker used this, as well as evidence from sedimentology and biomechanics, to show that sauropods were primarily terrestrial animals.
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Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 523 pp. However, it was not until the description of new, nearly complete sauropod skeletons from the United States (representing Apatosaurus and Camarasaurus) later that year that a complete picture of sauropods emerged. An approximate reconstruction of a complete sauropod skeleton was produced by artist John A. Ryder, hired by paleontologist E.D. Cope, based on the remains of Camarasaurus, though many features were still inaccurate or incomplete according to later finds and biomechanical studies.
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The idea of using early access was considered but ultimately rejected as the studio did not plan to support the game greatly post-launch. Sauropod's management assured its employees that the majority would move on to the studio's next project. However, on 23 September 2019, it was reported that, due to the forewent money mismanagement, Sauropod had laid off all of its 20 employees. François Alain and Couet stated in October 2019 that stated that Sauropod was still active, despite having laid off all staff.
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Paleontologists involved with the studies at Râpa Roșie have also opined that this is the only sauropod genus reported at any time in the latest Cretaceous Maastrichtian formations in Romania, which could be stated as Magyarosaurus.
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89 Fossil sauropod tracks have been reported from the formation.Weishampel, et al., 2004, pp. 517-607 The formation was deposited under lacustrine conditions in a shallow carbonate lake, with some exposure events in the sedimentary sequence.
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Representing about 0.3% of total body weight, they were voluminous enough to function as a gastric mill, a function sometimes denied for sauropod gastroliths because of their insufficient relative mass, being an order of magnitude lower.
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Bonaparte, J.F. 1999. An armoured sauropod from the Aptian of northern Patagonia, Argentina. In: Tomida, Y., Rich, T. H. & Vickers-Rich, P. (Eds.). Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium Tokyo: National Science Museum Monographs #15.
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Exactly how segregated versus age-mixed herding varied across different groups of sauropods is unknown. Further examples of gregarious behavior will need to be discovered from more sauropod species to begin detecting possible patterns of distribution.
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India was an island in the Late Cretaceous Rahiolisaurus has been found in the Lameta Formation, a rock unit radiometrically dated to the Maastrichtian age of the latest Cretaceous representing an arid or semi-arid landscape with a river flowing through it–probably providing shrub cover near the water–which formed between episodes of volcanism in the Deccan Traps. Rahiolisaurus likely inhabited what is now the Narmada River Valley. The formation is known for being a sauropod nesting site, yielding several dinosaur eggs, and sauropod herds likely chose sandy soil for nesting; though eggs belonging to large theropods have been found, it is unknown if they belong to Rahiolisaurus. Sauropod coprolite remains indicate they lived in a forested landscape, consuming plants such as Podocarpus, Araucaria, and Cheirolepidiaceae conifers; cycads; palm trees; early grass; and Caryophyllaceae, Sapindaceae, and Acanthaceae flowering plants.
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India was an island in the Late Cretaceous Rajasaurus has been found in the Lameta Formation, a rock unit radiometrically dated to the Maastrichtian age of the latest Cretaceous representing an arid or semi-arid landscape with a river flowing through it–probably providing shrub cover near the water–which formed between episodes of volcanism in the Deccan Traps. Rajasaurus likely inhabited what is now the Narmada River Valley. The formation is known for being a sauropod nesting site, yielding several dinosaur eggs, and sauropod herds likely chose sandy soil for nesting; though eggs belonging to large theropods have been found, it is unknown if they belong to Rajasaurus. Sauropod coprolite remains indicate they lived in a forested landscape, consuming plants such as Podocarpus, Araucaria, and Cheirolepidiaceae conifers; cycads; palm trees; early grass; and Caryophyllaceae, Sapindaceae, and Acanthaceae flowering plants.
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It lived alongside European species of Allosaurus (A. europaeus), Ceratosaurus, Stegosaurus and presumably Camptosaurus. Theropod Lourinhanosaurus also stalked the area. Lusotitan was the largest sauropod in the region, while the diplodocids Dinheirosaurus and Lourinhasaurus were also present.
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Rinconsaurus is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous in what is now Argentina. The type species, Rinconsaurus caudamirus, was described by Calvo and Riga in 2003, and is based on three partial skeletons.
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Nullotitan is a huge sauropod. The found remains of the holotype point to an animal of more than in length. The descriptors were able to identify some distinguishing features. Two of them are autapomorphies, unique derived properties.
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Angolatitan adamastor, a new sauropod dinosaur and the first record from Angola. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 83(1), 221-233. Mannion et al. (2013).Mannion, P. D., Upchurch, P., Barnes, R. N., & Mateus, O. (2013).
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As massive quadrupeds, sauropods developed specialized graviportal (weight- bearing) limbs. The hind feet were broad, and retained three claws in most species.Bonnan, M.F. 2005. Pes anatomy in sauropod dinosaurs: implications for functional morphology, evolution, and phylogeny; pp.
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Castle Story is a sandbox and real-time strategy game developed by Sauropod Studio. Funded through crowdfunding website Kickstarter in 2012, the game launched in September 2013 in early access, and was fully released in August 2017.
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Regional geology of Henan Province. Beijing: Geological Publishing House; p. 1–772.Lu ¨ JC, Xu L, Jia SH, Zhang XL, Ji Q. 2006. Discovery of a gigantic sauropod femur in Ruyang, Henan, China and its stratigraphic significance.
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Lockley, p. 191. Large slabs of the trackways were excavated and are on display at the AMNH and the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin, Texas, among other institutions. Theropod and sauropod tracks under water in the Paluxy River The sauropod tracks, now given the ichnogenus name Brontopodus, were made by an animal of 30 to 50 feet in length, perhaps a brachiosaurid such as Pleurocoelus, and the theropod tracks by an animal of 20 to 30 feet in length, perhaps an Acrocanthosaurus. A variety of scenarios was proposed to explain the tracks.
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Memoirs of the Geological Society of France - Vol. 39 - 1-6. R. tamesnensis was probably a synonym or a chimera of Nigersaurus taqueti,Upchurch, P., Barrett, P.M., and Dodson, P. (2004). "Sauropoda". In D. B. Weishampel, H. Osmolska, and P. Dodson (eds.), The Dinosauria (2nd edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 259–322.Mannion PD., Barrett PM. 2013. Additions to the sauropod dinosaur fauna of the Cenomanian (early Late Cretaceous) Kem Kem beds of Morocco: Palaeobiogeographical implications of the mid-Cretaceous African sauropod fossil record. Cretaceous Research 45:49–59.
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In 1933, Von Huene and Charles Matley described another species, Antarctosaurus septentrionalis, meaning "northern". The remains were found in the Lameta Formation of Madhya Pradesh State in India. This species does preserve important anatomical information but has been assigned to its own genus in 1994; Jainosaurus.Hunt, A.P., Lockley M., Lucas S. & Meyer C., 1995, "The global sauropod fossil record", In: M.G. Lockley, V.F. dos Santos, C.A. Meyer, and A.P. Hunt, (eds.) Aspects of sauropod paleobiology, GAIA 10: 261-279 Antarctosaurus jaxarticus from Kazakhstan is known from a single femur.
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The presence of these features in Sanajeh shows that increased oral kinesis (movement of the mouth) and intraoral mobility (the ability to move the bones of the palate) preceded the development of wide gapes in snakes. Therefore, reduced cranial kinesis in basal living snakes may be a fossorial adaptation rather than the retention of a plesiomorphic trait. A model showing Sanajeh indicus feeding from a titanosaur nest. The holotype of Sanajeh was found in association with sauropod eggs belonging to the oospecies Megaloolithus dhoridungriensis and one incompletely preserved sauropod hatchling, likely a titanosaur.
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Digital fly-through over the Glen Rose trackway, reconstructed from photographs The famous Glen Rose trackway on display in New York City includes theropod footprints belonging to several individuals which moved in the same direction as up to twelve sauropod dinosaurs. The theropod prints are sometimes found on top of the sauropod footprints, indicating that they were formed later. This has been put forth as evidence that a small pack of Acrocanthosaurus was stalking a herd of sauropods. While interesting and plausible, this hypothesis is difficult to prove and other explanations exist.
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These again were each mostly based on disparate material, from often geographically widely separated sites.Owen, R., 1842, "Report on British Fossil reptiles, Pt. II". Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 11: 60–204 As became apparent in 1849, some of these bones were not sauropod in nature at all but of Iguanodontidae. That year Alexander Melville, in a misguided attempt to clear matters up, named the authentic sauropod material of C. brevis as Cetiosaurus conybeari but thereby merely created a junior objective synonym of the former name.
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In Switzerland, this became the subject of several lines of scientific investigation. In 2005 Daniela Schwarz studied the pneumatisation of the vertebrae by tomography scanning them with neutrons and X-rays. In 2010 Andreas Christian used the well-preserved vertebrae to support his hypothesis that sauropod necks were held in a rather upright position,Christian, A. & Dzemski, G., 2011, "Neck posture in sauropods", pp: 251–260 in: Klein, N., Remes, K., Gee, C. G. & Sander, P. M. (eds.). Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: Understanding the life of giants.
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Adamantisaurus ( ) is a poorly-known genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. It is only known from six tail vertebrae but, as a sauropod, it can be assumed that this dinosaur was a very large animal with a long neck and tail. Sculpture of Adamantisaurus Like many titanosaurians, Adamantisaurus is incompletely known, making its exact relationships difficult to establish. However, similarities have been noted with Aeolosaurus and the Bauru Group titanosaurian formerly known as the "Peiropolis titanosaur", now called Trigonosaurus.
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Venenosaurus ( ) was a sauropod dinosaur. The name literally means "poison lizard", and it was named so after the Poison Strip Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation in Utah, United States, where the fossils were discovered by a Denver Museum of Natural History volunteer Tony DiCroce in 1998. Venenosaurus dicrocei was first described as a new species in 2001 by Virginia Tidwell, Kenneth Carpenter, and Suzanne Meyer. Venenosaurus is a relatively small (probably around 10 m (33 ft) long) titanosauriform sauropod, known from an incomplete skeleton of an adult and a juvenile.
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Fusuisaurus (meaning "Fusui lizard" from the name of the county where it was discovered) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China. Fragmentary postcranial remains of this animal have been discovered in 2001 in the Napai Formation of Guangxi, China and consist of the left ilium, left pubis, anterior caudals, most of the dorsal ribs and distal end of the left femur. This sauropod has been described as a basal titanosauriform. The type species is F. zhaoi, named in honour of Chinese paleontologist Zhao Xijin.
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Dongbeititan is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous-age Yixian Formation of Beipiao, Liaoning, China. It is based on holotype DNHM D2867, a partial postcranial skeleton including bones from the limbs, shoulder and pelvic girdles, and vertebrae. which was described in 2007 Its describers suggested it was as a basal titanosauriform, not as derived as Gobititan or Jiutaisaurus, but more derived than Euhelopus, Fusuisaurus, and Huanghetitan. The type species is D. dongi, and it is the first named sauropod from the Yixian Formation, which is part of the well-known Jehol Group.
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Brohisaurus, like all sauropod dinosaurs, would have been a large-bodied, long-necked herbivore. Its femur was only 12 cm across. The 15 to 20 meter long titanosauriform Phuwiangosaurus, by contrast, had a femur 20 cm in diameter.
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Shunosaurus, meaning "shu lizard", is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) beds in Sichuan Province in China, approximately 159±2 million years ago. The name derives from "Shu", an ancient name for the Sichuan province.
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The stegosaurian forelimb has evidence for a sauropod−like metacarpal configuration This was a different evolutionary strategy than megafaunal mammals such as modern elephants. Therapsids started evolving diverse and specialized forelimbs 270 million years ago, during the Permian.
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Tienshanosaurus (meaning "Tienshan lizard") is a genus of dinosaur from the Late Jurassic. It was a sauropod which lived in what is now China. Only one species is known, Tienshanosaurus chitiaensis, which was named and described in 1937.
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Ichnofossils at La Posa in the Tremp Formation. After initial interpretations as sauropod tracks, later models postulate they were produced by feeding rays. The Tremp Formation provided many fossilized dinosaur eggs.Hundreds of dinosaur eggs found in Spain - Inquisitr.
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Scaled type specimen Ohmdenosaurus was a primitive sauropod. It was an obligate quadruped, with a relatively short neck and robust body. Like all sauropods, it was herbivorous. Ohmdenosaurus most likely fed on plants included in Bennettitales, Araucariaceae, and Podocarpaceae.
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Xianshanosaurus is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (Aptian-Albian) of the Ruyang Basin in Henan Province, China. It was described in 2009 by a team of Chinese paleontologists. The type species is X. shijiagouensis.
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Early evolution and higher-level phylogeny of sauropod dinosaurs. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 18(S2), 1-79. A reduction to two carpals, long metacarpals relative to the radius, and a twisted ischial shaft serve to identify the appendicular skeleton.
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Qingxiusaurus is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Guangxi, China. The type species, described by Mo et al. in 2008, is Q. youjiangensis. Like other sauropods, Qingxiusaurus would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.
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Aucasaurus is known from finds in the Río Colorado Subgroup, a Late Cretaceous group comprising the Anacleto Formation in the Neuquén Basin of Argentina that has yielded many dinosaur fossils. Numerous sauropod eggs are also known from this deposit.
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Paul, G.S. (2016) The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs. 2nd ed. Princeton University Press p. 206 In 2017, paleontologist José Carballido and his colleagues estimated its mass at roughly , which was lighter than Patagotitan, a more complete giant sauropod.
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Laplatasaurus (meaning "La Plata lizard", named for La Plata, Argentina) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous in South America (Allen Formation, Argentina and the Del Palacio Member of Asencio Formation of Uruguay).
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A third species was named by Calvo and Salgado in 1995, Rebbachisaurus tessonei.Calvo G. O. and Salgado L (1995) "Rebbachisaurus tessonei sp. nov. A new sauropod from the Albian-Cenomanian of Argentina; new evidence on the origin of the Diplodocidae".
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S. weiyuanensis would have lived near a coastal environment and lived alongside the sauropod Sanpasaurus yaoi and an undescribed stegosaur genus. The holotype, IVPP V140, consists of three vertebrae and a tooth, discovered in a layer of the Ziliujing Formation.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284 (1860): 20171219. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1219. Like other sauropods, Malarguesaurus would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore. Malarguesaurus is the second sauropod dinosaur discovered in Mendoza Province; the first is Mendozasaurus neguyelap.
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In 1934, the Howe Quarry, a fossil location in northwestern Wyoming also yielded dinosaur bones with their associated gastroliths. In 1942, William Lee Stokes recognized the presence of gastroliths in the remains of sauropod dinosaurs recovered from Late Jurassic strata.
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Dinosaur tracksite of the Chacarilla Formation Fossil stegosaur, sauropod and theropod tracks and fossil flora have been reported from the formation.Weishampel et al., 2004, pp.517-607 The fourteen trackways of the Chacarilla III tracksite consist of 76 individual footprints.
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Lucas S, Herne M, Heckert A, Hunt A, and Sullivan R. Reappraisal of Seismosaurus, A Late Jurassic Sauropod Dinosaur from New Mexico. The Geological Society of America, 2004 Denver Annual Meeting (November 7–10, 2004). Retrieved on 2007-05-24.
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It is most likely Maastrichtian in age, and records a seasonal, semiarid environment with rivers that had greatly varying discharges. Notable animal fossils recovered include the theropod dinosaur Majungasaurus and the early birds Rahonavis and Vorona, and the titanosaurian sauropod Rapetosaurus.
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Mnyamawamtuka (pronounced Mm-nya-ma-wah-mm-too-ka; meaning "beast of the Mtuka river drainage" in Kiswahili) is a genus of lithostrotian titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous Galula Formation in Tanzania. The type and only species is M. moyowamkia.
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Gravisauria is a clade of sauropod dinosaurs consisting of some genera, Vulcanodontidae and Eusauropoda.Allain, R. and Aquesbi, N. (2008). "Anatomy and phylogenetic relationships of Tazoudasaurus naimi (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the late Early Jurassic of Morocco." Geodiversitas, 30(2): 345-424.
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Limaysaurus (“Limay lizard”) is a genus represented by a single species of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaurs, which lived during the mid-Cretaceous period, about 99.6 to 97 million years ago, in the Cenomanian, in what is now South America (northwestern Patagonia).
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The Sauropod appeared in the 2008 movie 100 Million BC. These massive sauropods peaceful and herbivorous and are the first prehistoric creature the Navy Seals encounter. It could be an Alamosaurus because it was shown living 70 million years ago.
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Although number of additional sauropod tracks were reported in subsequent accounts, they continued to be rare in relation to the much more common hadrosaurid and theropod tracks. Brennan Stettner and colleagues, in 2017, reported on footprints discovered during a 2007 expedition to the Nemegt locality. The best preserved of these, a very large, long impression of a hindfoot, features a very well preserved underside showing digital pads and four outwards directed digits, the first three of which showing claws. Also in 2017, Judai Nakajima and colleagues described a kidney-shaped impression as the first sauropod manus (forefoot) impression discovered in the formation.
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Rebbachisaurus (meaning "Aït Rebbach lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur of the superfamily Diplodocoidea, that lived during the Early–Late Cretaceous period in Africa about 99 million years ago. Remains attributed to Rebbachisaurus have been found in Morocco, Niger, Algeria and Tunisia, although only the Moroccan remains can be referred to the genus without doubt. The discovery of Rayososaurus, a South American sauropod nearly identical to Rebbachisaurus, supports the theory that there was still a land connection between Africa and South America during the Early Cretaceous, long after it was commonly thought the two continents had separated.Bonaparte, J. (1996).
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In the trunk, the vertebrae show typical non-sauropod characters, such as relatively long and low neural arches with a narrow anterior ridge (the anteriormost dorsal vertebrae have slightly high neural arches), an anteriorly placed parapophysis (one of the articulation points for the ribs), and lack of or less strong development of certain laminae (thin ridges). The diapophysis (the second articulation for the rib) is also in the same position as in basal sauropodomorphs. A lamina connecting the diapophysis to the prezygapophysis on all dorsals, but not in no-sauropod sauropodomorphs, is present in the posterior dorsals.
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Erketu (meaning "Erketü Tengri") is a genus of somphospondylan sauropod dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous roughly between 102 million and 86 million years ago. Its fossils were found in Mongolia between 2002 and 2003 during a field expedition and first described in 2006; later on in 2010 due to some cervicals that were left behind in the expedition. Erketu represent one of the first sauropods described from the Bayan Shireh Formation. The elongated cervical vertebrae of Erketu seems to indicate that it was the sauropod with the longest neck relative to its body size.
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Illustration showing a pack of Yutyrannus hunting Dongbeititan Because the three known individuals of Yutyrannus were allegedly found together, some paleontologists, including Xu Xing, have interpreted the animal as a pack hunter. Based on the presence of sauropod material in the quarry in which the three specimens were found, Xu has further speculated that Yutyrannus may have hunted sauropods, and that the three known individuals may have died while doing so. In addition, other sauropod hunting theropods such as Mapusaurus are known to have exhibited pack hunting behaviour. The true cause of their death, however, remains unknown.
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Size of Ledumahadi compared to a human At its time in the Early Jurassic epoch, Ledumahadi is thought to have been the largest land animal that had ever lived. It is estimated to have reached a maximum size of around in weight; well over twice any confident weight estimates for a Triassic sauropod (around 3 tonnes, in Camelotia), and still significantly larger than the highest estimates for Lessemsaurus, around 7 tonnes; even early true sauropods, such as Vulcanodon, are not known to have been this large; L. mafube was more comparable to the later sauropod Diplodocus in weight.
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A large amount of the material of the Kirkwood formation only includes isolated teeth or partial and fragmentary pieces of bone. Dinosaurs of the formation include a basal tetanuran, the primitive ornithomimosaurian Nqwebasaurus, the sauropod Algoasaurus, a potential titanosaurian, many ornithischians including Paranthodon, a genus of iguanodontian, and a "hypsilophodontid" (the family Hypsilophodontidae is no longer considered to be a natural grouping). Multiple additional sauropod taxa have been discovered, including a basal eusauropod, a brachiosaurid, a dicraeosaurid and a derived diplodocid. If the referral of teeth from Ethiopia to Paranthodon is correct, then the taxon's geographic range is extended significantly.
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Life restoration of Brachytrachelopan mesai This taxon's very short neck (approximately 40% shorter than other dicraeosaurids and the shortest of any known sauropod) is evidence that this lineage specialized to fill an ecological niche not exploited by other members of this infraorder. Small for a sauropod, Brachytrachelopan measured less than in length. Rauhut et al. (2005, 670) note that the high degree of fusion present between the preserved neural arches and their respective centra, as well as fusion between the sacral centra, sacral neural arches, and sacral neural spines is evidence that the holotype does not represent a juvenile animal.
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Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the NHMUK, had "great pleasure" to recommend to the Trustees of the NHMUK the fossil be purchased. The purchase was sanctioned on 25 February 1899, along with the purchase of assorted other remains for just over £357 (~£43,596 now), where the Leeds sauropod gained the accession number BMNH R3078 (now NHMUK R3078). Known elements of Cetiosauriscus The amount of material made NHMUK R3078 the most complete sauropod specimen from the United Kingdom, comparable only later to the "Rutland Dinosaur" (referred to Cetiosaurus) discovered in 1967. Known regions of the specimen include the forelimb, hindlimb and vertebral column.
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James A. Jensen with the reconstructed front leg of Ultrasauros Jensen, who described the original Supersaurus specimen, simultaneously reported the discovery of another gigantic sauropod, which would later be named "Ultrasaurus" macintoshiJensen, J.A. (1985). "Three new sauropod dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of Colorado." Great Basin Naturalist, 45: 697-709. (later renamed Ultrasauros macintoshi). The type specimen (the specimen used to define a new species) of Ultrasauros, being a backbone (dorsal vertebra, labelled BYU 9044), was later found to have come from Supersaurus. In fact, it probably belonged to the original Supersaurus specimen, which was discovered in the same quarry in 1972.
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Distal part of a left femur of a sauropod dinosaur regarded as the first dinosaur discovery of Thailand Dinosaur fossils were first discovered in Thailand during mineral exploration in the Phu Wiang area of Khon Kaen province. In 1976 Sudham Yaemniyom, a geologist, discovered a piece of bone on a streambed, Huai Pratu Tima, which was later identified as a distal part of the left femur of a sauropod dinosaur,Ingavat, R., Janvier, R., and Taquet, P. (1978) Decouverte en Thailande d'une portion de femur de dinosaure sauropode (Saurischia, Reptilia). C.R. Soc.Geol.France 3: 140-141 regarded as the first dinosaur discovery of Thailand.
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Malawisaurus (meaning "Malawi lizard") was a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. It lived in what is now Africa, specifically Malawi, during the Aptian age of the Early Cretaceous Period. It is one of the few titanosaurs for which skull material has been found.
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"Biggest of the big: a critical re- evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus." In Foster, J.R. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 36: 131–138.
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Fellow theropods include the large Achillobator, and the deinocheirid Garudimimus. Other herbivorous dinosaurs are represented by the ankylosaurs Talarurus and Tsagantegia, small marginocephalians Amtocephale and Graciliceratops, the hadrosauroid Gobihadros, and the sauropod Erketu. Other fauna include semiaquatic reptiles like crocodylomorphs and nanhsiungchelyid turtles.
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A brachiosaurid sauropod from the late Jurassic Cañadón Calcáreo Formation of Chubut, Argentina. Fossil Record, 9(2), 226-237. Padillasaurus it is the first member officially named from South America. It is also the latest brachiosaurid known from the ancient continent of Gondwana.
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"Biggest of the big: a critical re- evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus." In Foster, J.R. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 36: 131–138.
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The Corda Formation is a red sandstone geologic formation in the Parnaíba Basin in Tocantins, Brazil. It was formed during the Neoaptian to Eoalbian series of the Early Cretaceous. Large-scale fossil sauropod tracks have been reported from the formation.Alves, 2010Weishampel et al.
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He discovered tree fossils (Araucarioxylon hoffetti), turtles, and a sauropod, Tangvayosaurus hoffetti. Aptian age findings include a Psittacosaurus. In Pha Lane, on the banks of the Sê San River, a theropod was discovered. ;Museums Fossils are exhibited in a dinosaur museum in Savannakhet.
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According to paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. the exact size of this sauropod cannot be determined.Holtz, Thomas R., Jr.; Rey, Luis V. (2007). Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages (, p. 34). New York: Random House. .
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Paleofauna that lived alongside Geminiraptor in the lower bed, included other Theropods: Falcarius and Yurgovuchia. The sauropod Mierasaurus, the large iguanodontian Iguanacolossus and the turtle Naomichelys. There are also indeterminate Goniopholidids crocodiles and an unnamed velociraptorine known from the Lower Yellow Cat.
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Qijianglong is a genus of herbivorous mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of China.Wang, J.; Norell, M. A.; Pei, R.; Ye, Y.; Chang, S.-C (2019). Surprisingly young age for the mamenchisaurid sauropods in South China. Cretaceous Research doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2019.07.006.
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Diplodocids, or members of the family Diplodocidae ("double beams"), are a group of sauropod dinosaurs. The family includes some of the longest creatures ever to walk the Earth, including Diplodocus and Supersaurus, some of which may have reached lengths of up to .
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Yongjinglong was a medium-sized sauropod. The describers established some diagnostic traits. The premaxillary teeth are long and spoon- shaped. The neck vertebrae and anterior dorsal vertebrae possess large and deep pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions, that cover the entire sides of the centra.
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Size comparison Vulcanodon was a small sauropod. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated its length at eleven metres, its weight at 3.5 tonnes.Paul, G.S., 2010, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press p. 172 Some books mention lower estimates of approximately .
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"Biggest of the big: a critical re-evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus." In Foster, J.R. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 36: 131–138.
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"Ischyrosaurus" (meaning "strong lizard", for its large humerus; name in quotation marks because it is preoccupied) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Kimmeridgian-age Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, England. It was once synonymized with the Early Cretaceous-age Pelorosaurus.
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The level of fusion of the dorsosacral confirms the evolutionary history of the sauropod sacral count: the primordial pair incorporating first a dorsal (total of three), then a caudal (total of four), then another dorsal to make a total of five vertebrae.
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Dong participated in his first field expedition in 1963, aged 26, when he was part of a seven-person team sent by the IVPP to a site 180 miles outside Ürümqi, Xinjiang. On this expedition, Dong discovered fossils of a sauropod dinosaur.
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Skeletal mount of "Xinghesaurus" from a Japanese fossil expo "Xinghesaurus" was the name given to a species of sauropod dinosaur, possibly a titanosauriform, in 2009, in the guidebook for the dinosaur expo "Miracle of Deserts". No species name was given for the genus.
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The "Moshisaurus" humerus Hisa (1985) used "Moshisaurus" (or "Moshi-ryu") for sauropod remains from the Early Cretaceous Miyako Group of Japan. Dong et al. (1990) and Hasegawa et al. (1991) referred them to Mamenchisaurus, but Azuma & Tomida (1998) and Barrett et al.
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Journal of Paleontology 76(1): 156-172. The boundary with the underlying Javelina Formation has been estimated at about 66.5 million years old.Woodward, H. N. (2005). Bone histology of the sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis from the Javelina Formation, Big Bend National Park, Texas.
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The Tsagaantsav Formation, Tsagantsab Formation or Tsagan-Tsab Formation (Russian: Tsagaantsav Svita) is an Early Cretaceous (Hauterivian to Barremian) geologic formation in Mongolia.Tsagaantsav Formation in the Paleobiology Database Indeterminate sauropod and psittacosaurid remains have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel et al., 2004, pp.
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Daxiatitan (meaning "Daxia giant" after a tributary of the Yellow River) is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Lanzhou Basin, Gansu Province, northwestern China. It is known from fossils including several neck vertebrae, a shoulder blade, and a thigh bone.
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A giant European dinosaur and a new sauropod clade. Science 314, 1925-1927. A new study also concluded that Galveosaurus was a turiasaur, and not a cetiosaurid or macronarian. Galveosaurus was published in 2005 by Barbara, naming it Galveosaurus herreroi, in the journal Zootaxa.
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Reconstructed skeleton of the sauropod Argentinosaurus. It is among the largest known dinosaurs found in Neuquén. The Neuquén Province receives its name from the Neuquén River. The term "Neuquén" derives from the Mapudungun word "Nehuenken" meaning drafty, which the aborigines used for the river.
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Taylor, Mike (2001). "Re: Losillasaurus giganteus, a new Spanish sauropod". Dinosaur Mailing List The size estimation proposed by Francisco Gascó in his master thesis is and 12-15 tons.Gascó, F (2009): Sistemática y anatomía funcional de Losillasaurus giganteus Casanovas, Santafé & Sanz, 2001 (Turiasauria, Sauropoda).
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Poropat, S.F., Upchurch, P., Mannion, P.D., Hocknull, S.A., Kear, B.P., Sloan, T., Sinapius, G.H.K., Elliott, D.A., 2015. Revision of the sauropod dinosaur Diamantinasaurus matildae Hocknull et al. 2009 from the middle Cretaceous of Australia: implications for Gondwanan titanosauriform dispersal. Gondwana Research 27: 995–1033.
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Klinkhamer, A.J., Mallison, H., Poropat, S.F., Sloan, T. & Wroe, S., 2018. Comparative three-dimensional moment arm analysis of the sauropod forelimb: implications for the transition to a wide- gauge stance in titanosaurs. Anatomical Record; available online 12 October 2018. both of which involve Diamantinasaurus matildae.
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Angolasaurus bocagei, recovered only from the Itombe Formation, shared its habitat with the tylosaurine species Tylosaurus (formerly Mosasaurus) iembeensis and the durophagous shallow-water turtle Angolachelys. Indeterminate halisaurine and plesiosaur remains have also been recovered from this region. Terrestrial fauna consisted of the sauropod Angolatitan.
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Pulanesaura is an extinct genus of basal sauropod known from the Early Jurassic (late Hettangian to Sinemurian) Upper Elliot Formation of the Free State, South Africa. It contains a single species, Pulanesaura eocollum, known from partial remains of at least two subadult to adult individuals.
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Angolatitan was a basal titanosauriform, more derived than Brachiosaurus but less derived than Euhelopus and Titanosauria, which is notable given its relatively late appearance in the sauropod fossil record. Recent phylogenetic tests run by Gorsack and O'Conner (2017) recover Angolatitan as a non-titanosaurian titanosauriform.
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Zby is an extinct genus of turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur known from the Late Jurassic (late Kimmeridgian stage) of the Lourinhã Formation, central west Portugal. It contains a single species, Zby atlanticus. It is named after Georges Zbyszewski, who studied the geology and paleontology of Portugal.
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The team excavated a massive quarry and gradually recovered a significant portion of the rear half of a diplodocid sauropod dinosaur. In 1991 this dinosaur was formally described as the new genus Seismosaurus and estimated to be the longest dinosaur known to science at long.
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Aside from Shuangbaisaurus, several sauropodomorph dinosaurs originate from the Fengjiahe Formation. These include Chinshakiangosaurus chunghoensis (a possible sauropod), Lufengosaurus sp., Yimenosaurus youngi, and Yunnanosaurus huangi (a juvenile specimen, which was also discovered in Shuangbai County). Ostracods of the genus Darwinula have also been found.
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Cetiosauridae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs which was first proposed by Richard Lydekker in 1888.R. Lydekker. 1888. Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum (Natural History). Part I. Containing the Orders Ornithosauria, Crocodilia, Dinosauria, Squamata, Rhynchocephalia, and Proterosauria.
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It had a least-shaft circumference of , which gives a weight estimate of , making it the largest known bird individual ever recorded. This is comparable to or greater than the mass estimates of the smallest (insular dwarf) sauropod dinosaurs: Europasaurus, at ; and Magyarosaurus, between .
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Rinconsaurus is a titanosaurid sauropod. Within the titanosaurs, Calvo and Riga regard this dinosaur as closely related to Aeolosaurus based on several derived traits. In 2007, Casal et al. assigned Rinconsaurus, Gondwanatitan, and Aeolosaurus to the Aeolosauridae, a proposed stem-based clade of titanosaurs.
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Microcoelus (meaning "small hollow") is a dubius genus of small Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur native to Argentina.A. Otero and M. Reguero. (2013). "Dinosaurs (Reptilia, Archosauria) at Museo de La Plata, Argentina: annotated catalogue of the type material and Antarctic specimens." Palaeontologia Electronica, 16(1): 1–24.
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Datousaurus was about 15 metres long and herbivorous. It had a deep large skull for a sauropod. The rarity of its fossils suggest that it may not have been as social as other sauropods, which are often preserved in large numbers in a single deposit.
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Haplocanthosaurus (meaning "simple spined lizard") is a genus of intermediate sauropod dinosaur. Two species, H. delfsi and H. priscus, are known from incomplete fossil skeletons. It lived during the late Jurassic period (Kimmeridgian stage), 155 to 152 million years ago.Turner, C.E. and Peterson, F., (1999).
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Life restoration Chubutisaurus (meaning "Chubut lizard") is a genus of dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period. It lived in South America. It is classified as a sauropod, specifically one of the titanosaurs. The type species, Chubutisaurus insignis, was described by del Corro in 1975.
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"Biconcavoposeidon" is the placeholder name for AMNH FARB 291, five consecutive posterior dorsal vertebrae of a brachiosaurid sauropod, from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation, Wyoming. Not much else is currently known about "Biconcaveoposeidon", except that it was discovered in the Bone Cabin quarry in 1898.
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"Rutellum" is the pre- Linnaean name given to a dinosaur specimen from the Middle Jurassic. It was a sauropod, possibly a cetiosaurid,Delair, J.B., and Sarjeant, W.A.S. (2002). The earliest discoveries of dinosaurs: the records re-examined. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 113:185–197.
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After relocating the original Nemegtosaurus quarry, these researchers excavated postcranial bones of the Nemegtosaurus holotype including the centrum of a caudal vertebra and hind limb bones, which allowed, for the first time, a direct comparison between the Nemegtosaurus and Opisthocoelicaudia type specimens based on overlapping elements. These postcranial elements were found to be very similar to the corresponding parts of the Opisthocoelicaudia holotype. Most importantly, the discovered caudal centrum is opisthocoelousa diagnostic feature of Opisthocoelicaudiasuggesting both genera were either closely related or synonymous. Furthermore, these authors noted that none of the 32 known sauropod localities of the Nemegt Formation revealed evidence for the presence of more than one species of sauropod.
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Abrosaurus (; 'delicate lizard' from the Greek αβρος meaning 'delicate' or 'dainty' and σαυρος meaning 'lizard') is a genus of macronarian sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Period of what is now Asia, one of many dinosaurs found at the Dashanpu Quarry in the Sichuan Province of China. Like most sauropods, Abrosaurus was a quadrupedal herbivore but it was rather small for a sauropod, not much more than 30 feet (9 m) long. Its head was boxy and topped with a tall bony arch containing the nostrils. The generic name (meaning "delicate lizard") refers to the nature of the skull, with large openings separated by thin bony struts.
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During the 1980s, a fossil site known as Cuesta Lonsal, in the Kimmeridgian to Tithonian Villar del Arzobispo Formation near Galve (Teruel), Spain, was excavated by local amateur fossil hunter José María Herrero after he found the fossilized remains of a sauropod dinosaur. Zaragoza University and the Government of Aragón commissioned members of a scientific research team known as "Aragosaurus" to investigate the site in 1987. They determined that the site would be an important one for paleontological research, and after obtaining the necessary permits, they began their own dig there in 1993. Between 1993 and 2002, they obtained more than 50 bones associated with a new sauropod species.
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To complete the mount, sauropod feet that were discovered at the same quarry and a tail fashioned to appear as Marsh believed it shouldbut which had too few vertebraewere added. In addition, a sculpted model of what the museum thought the skull of this massive creature might look like was made. This was not a delicate skull like that of Diplodocuswhich was later found to be more accuratebut was based on "the biggest, thickest, strongest skull bones, lower jaws and tooth crowns from three different quarries". These skulls were likely those of Camarasaurus, the only other sauropod for which good skull material was known at the time.
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Historical reconstruction by Heinrich Harder (as "Gigantosaurus"), 1912 In 1907, German paleontologist Eberhard Fraas who was working the Tendaguru Beds in German East Africa (presently Tanzania), discovered two sauropod specimens at a single site ("Quarry A"). The two individuals, designated "Skeleton A" and "Skeleton B", each represented a different sauropod species. In 1908 he named these respectively Gigantosaurus africanus ("African giant lizard") and G. robustus ("Robust giant lizard").E. Fraas, 1908, "Dinosaurierfunde in Ostafrika", Jahreshefte des Vereins für Vaterländische Naturkunde in Württemberg 64: 84-86 A third, unrelated African species, "Gigantosaurus" dixeyi, was named by Haughton in 1928, and has since been reassigned to Malawisaurus.
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If Tornieria were the same genus as Barosaurus, then the name Tornieria would be abandoned as a junior subjective synonym. However, later researchers proposed generic distinction between the American and the African form. In the early 21st century this usage became prevalent and in 2006 Kristian Remes in a review concluded that Tornieria was indeed distinct and a valid genus.Remes, K., 2006, "Revision of the Tendaguru sauropod Tornieria africana (Fraas) and its relevance for sauropod paleobiogeography", Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26(3): 651–669 A complication is formed by the fact that Janensch in 1961 recognised a variety of B. africanus: B. africanus var.
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Its small stature was probably the result of insular dwarfism occurring in a population of sauropods isolated on an island of the late Jurassic in what is now the Langenberg area of northern Germany. The diplodocoid sauropod Brachytrachelopan was the shortest member of its group because of its unusually short neck. Unlike other sauropods, whose necks could grow to up to four times the length of their backs, the neck of Brachytrachelopan was shorter than its backbone. On or shortly before 29 March 2017 a sauropod footprint about 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) long was found at Walmadany in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia.
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Occasionally ichnites preserve traces of the claws, and help confirm which sauropod groups lost claws or even digits on their forefeet. Sauropod tracks from the Villar del Arzobispo Formation of early Berriasian age in Spain support the gregarious behaviour of the group. The tracks are possibly more similar to Sauropodichnus giganteus than any other ichnogenera, although they have been suggested to be from a basal titanosauriform. The tracks are wide-gauge, and the grouping as close to Sauropodichnus is also supported by the manus-to-pes distance, the morphology of the manus being kidney bean-shaped, and the morphology of the pes being subtriangular.
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Lockley, p. 186. These were the first sauropod footprints scientifically documented, and were designated a National Natural Landmark in 1969. Some are as large as about 3 feet (1 m) across. The prints are thought to have been preserved originally in a tidal flat or a lagoon.
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The fossil bird genus Stromeria, named in his honor by Kálmán Lambrecht in 1929, is today synonymized with Eremopezus. The sauropod Paralititan stromeri is also named in his honor. The majority of his fossil discoveries were destroyed during World War Two and only photographs of some remain.
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Tail-club Its neck length indicates that Shunosaurus was a low browser. The form of its jaws is well-adapted to processing large amounts of coarse plant material.Chatterjee, S. & Zheng, Z. 2002. "Cranial anatomy of Shunosaurus, a basal sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic of China".
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From the formation another sauropod had already been known, Aegyptosaurus. Paralititan differs from Aegyptosaurus in its larger size, the latter genus weighing only fifteen tons, possibly in not having pleurocoels in its front tail vertebrae, and in possessing a relatively longer deltopectoral crest on its humerus.
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Sánchez- Hernández, B. 2005. Galveosaurus herreroi, a new sauropod dinosaur from Villar del Arzobispo Formation (Tithonian-Berriasian) of Spain. Zootaxa 1034, 1-20. Late that same year, a team led by José Luis Barco published a less formal article in the magazine Naturaleza Aragonesa (Barco et al.
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The estimated length was later revised downward to and later on to Carpenter, K. (2006). "Biggest of the big: a critical re- evaluation of the mega-sauropod Amphicoelias fragillimus." In Foster, J.R. and Lucas, S.G., eds., 2006, Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation.
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René Lavocat (August 24, 1909-August 9, 2007) was a French paleontologist who described several genera of African dinosaurs including the sauropod Rebbachisaurus, as well as several extinct mammals such as the family Kenyamyidae. The mammal Lavocatia, the Notosuchian Lavocatchampsa and phorusrhacid Lavocatavis are named after him.
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Sea water once again intruded into the eastern part of the state. This sea was inhabited by marine reptiles such as turtles and plesiosaurs. On land, the brachiosaurid sauropod Sonorasaurus lived in what is now southern Arizona during the middle part of the Cretaceous.Ratkevich, R (1998).
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Baotianmansaurus (named after the Baotianman National Nature Reserve) is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur. Its fossils have been found in Upper Cretaceous rocks in Henan, China, within the Gaogou Formation. The type species is B. henanensis, described in 2009. The holotype is 41H III-0200.
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Galvesaurus, or Galveosaurus, (meaning "Galve lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic period. Fossils of the only known species, G. herreroi, were found in Galve, Spain, hence its generic name, "Galve lizard". The specific name G. herreroi honours the discoverer, José María Herrero.
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Soriatitan ("Soria titan") is a genus of brachiosaurid sauropod from the Early Cretaceous of Spain. It is known from one species, S. golmayensis, found in the Golmayo Formation. It lived between 138 and 130 million years ago was identified by a team of paleontologists in Spain.
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Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Carballido, J.L.; Pol, D.; Otero, A.; Cerda, I.A.; Salgado, L.; Garrido, A.C.; Ramezani, J.; Cúneo, N.R.; Krause, J.M. (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
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A 2015 study concluded that Brontosaurus is a valid genus of sauropod distinct from Apatosaurus, but not all paleontologists agree with this division. As it existed in North America during the late Jurassic, Apatosaurus would have lived alongside dinosaurs such as Allosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus.
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Bellusaurus (meaning "Beautiful lizard", from Vulgar Latin bellus 'beautiful' (masculine form) and Ancient Greek sauros 'lizard') was a small short-necked sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic which measured about long. Its fossils were found in Shishugou Formation rocks in the northeastern Junggar Basin in China.
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Initially, Austrosaurus was considered a cetiosaurid, like Patagosaurus or Shunosaurus. Hocknull et al. (2009) described the new sauropod Wintonotitan from material that originally assigned to Austrosaurus by Coombs and Molnar in 1981.Hocknull, SA; White, MA; Tischler, TR, Cook AG, Calleja ND, Sloan T, Elliott DA (2009).
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Archaeodontosaurus descouensi right mandible Archaeodontosaurus ("ancient- toothed lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. Its fossils were found in the Isalo III Formation of Madagascar. The type species, Archaeodontosaurus descouensi, was described in September 2005. The specific name honours the collector, Didier Descouens.
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The Palaeobiology Database It is known from only a single dorsal vertebra. A left humerus was formerly referred to this species, but it is now considered to belong to Neuquensaurus. This species may be a synonym of the contemporary sauropod Neuquensaurus australis.J. S. McIntosh. 1990. Sauropoda.
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The De Queen Formation, formerly known as the DeQueen Limestone Member is a Mesozoic geological formation located in southwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. Fossil sauropod and theropod tracks have been reported from the formation.Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution." pp. 517–607.
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Nemegtosauridae is a family of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs based on their diplodocid-like skulls.McIntosh, J. S., 1990, "Sauropoda" in The Dinosauria, Edited by David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska. University of California Press, pp. 345–401.Upchurch, P., Barrett, P.M. and Dodson, P. 2004. Sauropoda.
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However, the name Gigantosaurus had already been used for the European sauropod Gigantosaurus megalonyx Seeley, 1869. Fraas, not intending to place his species in the same genus as this English form, had believed that the name was available, since at the time the latter species was considered to be a junior synonym of Ornithopsis and Seeley in his opinion had not provided a sufficient description anyway. Another German paleontologist, Richard Sternfeld, renamed the Tanzanian sauropod Tornieria in 1911, making the two species Tornieria africana and T. robusta. The generic name honours the German herpetologist Gustav Tornier.Sternfeld, R., 1911, "Zur Nomenklatur der Gattung Gigantosaurus Fraas", Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 1911: 398 A re-evaluation of Tornieria in 1922 by Werner Janensch concluded that one species, T. africana, was actually an African species of the North American sauropod genus Barosaurus: Barosaurus africanus.Janensch, W., 1922, "Das Handskelett von Gigantosaurus robustus und Brachiosaurus brancai aus den Tendaguru-Schichten Deutsch- Ostafrikas", Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie 1922: 464–480 The other African species, T. robusta, later turned out to belong to a titanosaur.
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The Early Jurassic sauropod dinosaurs Zizhongosaurus, Barapasaurus, Tazoudasaurus, and Vulcanodon may form a natural group of basal sauropods called the Vulcanodontidae. Basal vulcanodonts include some of the earliest known examples of sauropods. The family-level name Vulcanodontidae was erected by M.R. Cooper in 1984. In 1995 Hunt et al.
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A hypothetical scale diagram showing the Argyrosaurus holotype forelimb compared to some humans, with known material in white. Argyrosaurus was a medium-sized sauropod which is estimated to measure long and weighing up to according to Paul.Paul, Gregory S. Dinosaurs: A Field Guide. London: A. & C. Black, 2010. Print.
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Pittman, Jeffrey, Transactions of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies, vol. XXXIV (1984), pp. 202–209 A field of 5–10,000 sauropod footprints were found in a mudstone layer covering a layer of gypsum."Geologists to Make Casts of Rare Dinosaur Prints," Arkansas Gazette, January 1, 1984; sec.
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Restoration Tastavinsaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur belonging to the Titanosauriformes. It is based on a partial skeleton from the Early Cretaceous Xert Formation of Spain. The type species is Tastavinsaurus sanzi, named in honor of the Rio Tastavins in Spain and Spanish paleontologist José Luis Sanz.
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The Nanxiong Formation consists of a 2000-meter sequence of red sandstones and clays which has yielded dinosaur fossils, dinosaur footprints and abundant egg shells. Jiangxisaurus shared its paleoenvironment with the sauropod Gannansaurus, the duckbill Microhadrosaurus, the therizinosauroid Nanshiungosaurus, the tyrannosaurid Tarbosaurus and other two oviraptorids, Banji and Ganzhousaurus.
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Iuticosaurus (meaning "Jute lizard") is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of the Isle of Wight.Iuticosaurus on DinoWight Two species have been named: I. valdensis and I. lydekkeri. I. valdensis was found in the Wessex Formation and I. lydekkeri in the younger Upper Greensand.
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Based on that, was suggested these materials represent different parts of the same sauropod. Being the first representative of the family Mamenchisauridae implies a high diversity of sauropods in the late Early Jurassic. The specimen was kept at Chengdu University of Technology Museum, with the number MCDUT 14454.
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One example is the case of a Cretaceous sauropod skull of Nemegtosaurus found in association with the postcranial skeleton Opisthocoelicaudia. In paleoanthropological studies, reconstruction of relationship between various species/remains is considered to be better supported by cranial characters rather than postcranial characters. However, this assumption is largely untested.
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Skeleton viewed from above, National Technical University of Athens, Greece Size comparison. Limaysaurus was a medium-sized sauropod. Gregory S. Paul in 2010 estimated its length at fifteen meters (50 ft) and its weight at seven tonnes.Paul, G.S., 2010, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press, pp.
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Bonatitan is a genus of titanosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Allen Formation of Argentina. It was named in 2004.Martinelli, A. and Forasiepi, A.M. (2004). "Late Cretaceous vertebrates from Bajo de Santa Rosa (Allen Formation), Rio Negro province, Argentina, with the description of a new sauropod dinosaur (Titanosauridae)".
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Gaston Leroux also mentions it in The Phantom of the Opera (chap. VI). Herman Melville mentions Adamastor and Camões in his Billy Budd, at the end of Chapter VII. Adamastor is also the name of a sauropod dinosaur, Angolatitan adamastor, found in Angola, named by the paleontologist Octávio Mateus.
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Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.Yates, A. M., Bonnan, M. F., Neveling, J., Chinsamy, A., & Blackbeard, M. G. (2010). A new transitional sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of South Africa and the evolution of sauropod feeding and quadrupedalism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1682), 787-794.
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As Naish and Martill point out, the tooth is comparable in size to that of Brachiosaurus, indicating that the owner was a large sauropod; as a possible turiasaur, the size should not change drastically. It would have been a quadrupedal herbivore, possibly around 25 m (82 ft) long.
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Gondwanatitan was a fairly small sauropod, only 7 meters long. It had relatively gracile limb bones. The middle caudal vertebrae are distinctively "heart-shaped", which allows isolated caudal vertebrae to be easily distinguished from those of Aeolosaurus. The vertebrae from the middle part of its tail had elongated centra.
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Likewise, it is unlikely that brachiosaurids could rear up onto the hind legs, as their center of gravity was much farther forward than other sauropods, which would cause such a stance to be unstable.Mallison, H. (2009). "Rearing for food? Kinetic/dynamic modeling of bipedal/tripodal poses in sauropod dinosaurs".
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Fossil material assigned to Astrodon has also been found in two Oklahoma localities of the Antlers Formation, which stretches from southwest Arkansas through southeastern Oklahoma and into northeastern Texas.P. Larkin. 1910. The occurrence of a sauropod dinosaur in the Trinity Cretaceous of Oklahoma. Journal of Geology 17:93–98R.
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"Gspsaurus" (a nomen manuscriptum) is a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Vitakri Formation of Sulaiman Basin of Pakistan. It has been suggested to be synonymous with the also invalid taxon "Maojandino", also proposed by Malkani.Malkani, M.S., 2015. Dinosaurs, Mesoeucrocodiles, Pterosaurs, New Fauna and Flora from Pakistan.
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Arkharavia (meaning "Arkhara road") is a dubious genus of somphospondylan sauropod, but at least some of the remains probably belong to a hadrosaurid. It lived in what is now Russia, during the Late Cretaceous. It was described in 2010 by Alifanov and Bolotsky. The type species is A. heterocoelica.
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They can be up to 162 mm long and 130 mm wide.Z. Zhao and Z. Li. 1988. A new structural type of the dinosaur eggs from Anlu County, Hubei Province. Vertebrata PalAsiatica 26(2):107-115 These eggs may have been laid by a Therizinosaur, Sauropod, or Ornithopod.
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Life restoration showing hypothetical nasal ornamentation Like all sauropod dinosaurs, Brachiosaurus was a quadruped with a small skull, a long neck, a large trunk with a high-ellipsoid cross section, a long, muscular tail and slender, columnar limbs. Large air sacs connected to the lung system were present in the neck and trunk, invading the vertebrae and ribs by bone resorption, greatly reducing the overall density of the body. The neck is not preserved in the holotype specimen, but was very long even by sauropod standards in the closely related Giraffatitan, consisting of thirteen elongated cervical (neck) vertebrae. The neck was held in a slight S-curve, with the lower and upper sections bent and a straight middle section.
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Closer view of body In 1977 and 1978 a sauropod skeleton was excavated by paleontologists Wei Feng, Wu Weitang and Kang Ximin in the Jinhua Formation of Lixian Village, Jiangshan county, in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang. The type and only named species, Jiangshanosaurus lixianensis, was formally described by Tang Feng, Kang, Jin Xingsheng, Wei and Wu in 2001. The holotype, ZNM M1322, of J.lixianensis includes elements of the left shoulder, five back vertebrae, three tail vertebrae, the pubic bones, the ischia, and a left femur.Feng Tang, Xi-Min Kang, Xing-Sheng Jin, Feng Wei, Wei-Tang Wu (2001) "A New Sauropod Dinosaur of Cretaceous From Jiangshan, Zhejiang Province" in: Vertebrata PalAsiatica.
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Lusotitan is a genus of herbivorous brachiosaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period of Portugal. In 1947 Manuel de Matos, a member of the Geological Survey of Portugal, discovered large sauropod fossils in the Portuguese Lourinhã Formation that date back to the Tithonian stage of the Late Jurassic period. In 1957 Albert-Félix de Lapparent and Georges Zbyszewski named the remains as a new species of Brachiosaurus: Brachiosaurus atalaiensis.A.F. de Lapparent & G. Zbyszewski, 1957, "Les dinosauriens du Portugal", Mémoires des Services Géologiques du Portugal, nouvelle série 2: 1–63 The specific name referred to the site Atalaia. In 2003 Octávio Mateus and Miguel Telles Antunes named it as a separate genus: Lusotitan.
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The generic name comes from sauros (Greek σαύρος for "lizard"), and Poseidon (Ποσειδών), the sea god in Greek mythology, who is also associated with earthquakes, that facet styled as Ennosigaios or Enosikhthōn, "Earthshaker". This is a reference to the notion that a sauropod's weight was so great that the ground shook as it walked. The specific descriptor proteles also comes from the Ancient Greek πρωτέλης and means "perfect before the end", which refers to Sauroposeidon's status as the last and most specialized giant sauropod known in North America, during the Early Cretaceous. In 2012, numerous other sauropod remains that had been known for decades under various different names were also classified in the genus Sauroposeidon.
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In mid-August, after some cleaning and repairing of the specimen, geologist Henry Woodward visited Eyebury and produced a life-sized drawing of the remains for presentation at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting. Following this presentation, on 17 August 1898, Henry Woodward returned with American palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, who considered the sauropod to be closely related to the North American taxon Diplodocus. Alfred Leeds offered the sauropod to the British Museum of Natural History (BMNH, now abbreviated as NHMUK) for £250, which would equate to about £30,529 in 2017. The NHMUK had earlier in 1890 and 1892 bought the First and Second Collections of Alfred Leeds, respectively.
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Naish has appeared widely on British television, having featured on BBC News 24, Channel 4's Sunday Brunch, Richard and Judy, and Live from Dinosaur Island,, as well as the documentary How to build a dinosaur. He appeared on a Channel 4 discussion programme on cryptozoology, presented by journalist Jon Ronson, during the late 1990s. Naish's research on the giant Isle of Wight sauropod "Angloposeidon", on the pterosaur Tupuxuara, and on the sauropod Xenoposeidon was widely reported in the news media, as was his research paper on floating giraffes. Naish has been featured in several stories about so-called mystery carcasses including the Montauk Monster, San Diego Demonoid, Beast of Exmoor, and a Russian mystery monster carcass.
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This was a different, much smaller dinosaur than Jensen's find, but Kim thought it represented a similarly gigantic animal because he confused a humerus for an ulna. While the logic of naming was incorrect, the Ultrasaurus from Kim's find fulfilled the requirements for naming and became regarded as a legitimate, if dubious genus. Thus, because Jensen did not publish his own "Ultrasaurus" find until 1985, Kim's use retained its official priority of name, and Jensen was forced to choose a new name (in technical terms, his original choice was "preoccupied" by Kim's sauropod). In 1991, at his suggestion, George Olshevsky changed one letter, and renamed Jensen's sauropod Ultrasauros, with the final "o".
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The "Barnes High sauropod" is the informal name given to MIWG-BP001, an undescribed sauropod dinosaur specimen from the Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight. It was discovered in the cliffs around Barnes High in 1992 and is currently owned by the privately run unaccredited Dinosaur Farm Museum near Brighstone, the ownership situation was described as "complex" and the specimen is currently inaccessible to researchers. It is roughly 40% complete and consists of a "Partial postcranial skeleton, including presacral vertebrae, anterior caudal vertebrae, girdle and limb elements" including a largely complete forelimb. It has been suggested to be a Brachiosaur and is possibly synonymous with the earlier named Eucamerotus due to similarities with the vertebrae.
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The archosauriforms went to further extremes of diversity, encompassing giant sauropod dinosaurs, flying pterosaurs and birds, semiaquatic crocodilians, phytosaurs, and proterochampsians, and apex predators such as erythrosuchids, pseudosuchians, and theropod dinosaurs. Despite the staggering diversity of archosauromorphs, they can still be united as a clade thanks to several subtle skeletal features.
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Ekrixinatosaurus was found in the red beds of the Candeleros Formation, which has yielded a wide variety of vertebrates. It shared its environment with the titanosaurian sauropod Andesaurus and the rebbachisaurid sauropods Limaysaurus and Nopcsaspondylus. Iguanodont ornithischian remains have reportedly also been found. The carcharodontosaurid Giganotosaurus was possibly the apex predator.
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Euhelopodidae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs which includes the genus Euhelopus. All known euhelopodids lived in what is now East Asia. The family name was first proposed by American paleontologist Alfred Sherwood Romer in 1956. The four genera Chiayusaurus, Omeisaurus, Tienshanosaurus, and Euhelopus were the original proposed euhelopodines (subfamily Euhelopodinae).
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An area of 215 by 195 millimetres has been preserved. It shows non-overlapping hexagonal scales with a diameter of between ten and twenty-five millimetres. The scales gradually decrease in size, perhaps towards the elbow, to provide it greater flexibility. The scales strongly resemble skin impressions of later sauropod finds.
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The Nanxiong Formation consists of a 2000-meter sequence of red sandstones and clays which has yielded dinosaur fossils, dinosaur footprints and abundant egg shells. Microhadrosaurus shared its paleoenvironment with the sauropod Gannansaurus, the therizinosauroid Nanshiungosaurus, the tyrannosaurid Qianzhousaurus and the oviraptorids Banji, Jiangxisaurus, Corythoraptor, Ganzhousaurus, Huanansaurus, Nankangia and Tongtianlong.
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Yunmenglong shares some characters with Euhelopus, Qiaowanlong and Erketu, and a phylogenetic analysis places it as a sister taxon of Qiaowanlong, both grouped with Erketu in a position more derived than Euhelopus but basal to Titanosauria. Yunmenglong represents the first long-necked sauropod dinosaur recorded from central China to date.
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Savannasaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Winton Formation of Queensland, Australia, containing one species, Savannasaurus elliottorum, named in 2016 by Poropat et al. The only known specimen was originally nicknamed "Wade". The holotype is held on display at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs museum.
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Algoasaurus (; "Algoa Bay reptile") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Berriasian-early Valanginian-age Early Cretaceous Upper Kirkwood Formation of Cape Province, South Africa. It was a neosauropod; although it has often been assigned to the Titanosauridae,Steel, R. (1970). Saurischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie/Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology. Part 14.
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In 1883 W.A. Kiprijanow created a Poekilopleuron schmidti, of which the specific name honours Friedrich Schmidt, based on some indeterminate ribs and a sauropod metatarsal. This chimaera is a nomen dubium. A much later named species is Poekilopleuron valesdunensis created by Ronan Allain in 2002. In 2005 it was renamed Dubreuillosaurus.
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Sonidosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous. It was a titanosaur which lived in what is now Inner Mongolia. The type species, Sonidosaurus saihangaobiensis, was described by Xu, Zhang, Tan, Zhao, and Tan in 2006. It was a small titanosaur, about 9 meters (30 ft) long.
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This could be similar to the way the relatively robust Apatosaurus weighs far more than the longer but much slimmer Diplodocus. In addition, it is possible that sauropods may have had an air sac system, like those in birds, which could reduce all sauropod mass estimates by 20% or more.
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"An armoured sauropod from the Aptian of northern Patagonia, Argentina." In Tomida, Y., Rich, T. H. & Vickers-Rich, P. (eds.), 1999. Proceedings of the Second Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium, National Science Museum Monographs #15, Tokyo: 1-12. Phylogenetic studies have failed to clarify the exact relationships of Haplocanthosaurus with any certainty.
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In addition to these finds, numerous dinosaur remains have been uncovered. Fossils of dinosaurs resembling Plateosaurus, Coelophysis, and Dilophosaurus were excavated. Mount Kirkpatrick holds the first dinosaur scientifically named on the continent: the large predatory Cryolophosaurus. In 2004, scientists have even found partial remains of a large sauropod plant-eating dinosaur.
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Its remains were found with those of the early sauropod Tazoudasaurus. Also from the Early Jurassic of the High Atlas, but from another formation, are the fossils of another, smaller theropod (currently in preparation). It's been estimated to be 5.1 meters (16.7 ft) long and 220 kg (485 lbs) in weight.
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In sauropod dinosaurs, the vertebrates with the longest necks, the total length of the vagus nerve and recurrent laryngeal nerve would have been up to long in Supersaurus, but these would not be the longest neurons that ever existed: the neurons reaching the tip of the tail would have exceeded .
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99 The hands were unusually elongated, bearing sickle-shaped claws even more recurved than those of spinosaurids.Calvo, J.O., Porfiri, J.D., González-Riga, B.J., and Kellner, A.W. (2007) "A new Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystem from Gondwana with the description of a new sauropod dinosaur". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 79(3): 529-41.
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Titanosaurus (meaning 'titanic lizard' – named after the mythological Titans, deities of Ancient Greece) is a dubious genus of sauropod dinosaurs, first described by Lydekker in 1877.Lydekker, R. (1877). "Notices of new and other Vertebrata from Indian Tertiary and Secondary rocks." Records of the Geological Survey of India, 10(1): 30-43.
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Euhelopus has since its original description often been considered a rather large sauropod. It has been thought to weigh about fifteen to twenty tonnes and attain an adult length of . Later estimates have downsized this considerably. In 2016, Gregory S. Paul estimated the body length at eleven metres, the weight at 3.5 tonnes.
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Paralititan (meaning "tidal giant") was a giant titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur genus discovered in coastal deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt. It lived between 99.6 and 93.5 million years ago.Holtz, Thomas R. Jr. (2012) Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages, Winter 2011 Appendix.
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Neuquensaurus (meaning "Neuquén lizard") is a genus of saltasaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived in the Late Cretaceous, about 80 million years ago in Argentina and Uruguay in South America. Its fossils were recovered from outcrops of the Anacleto Formation around Cinco Saltos, near the Neuquén river from which its name is derived.
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José L. Carballido; Diego Pol; Alejandro Otero; Ignacio A. Cerda; Leonardo Salgado ; Alberto C. Garrido ; Jahandar Ramezani ; Néstor R. Cúneo ; Javier M. Krause (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 284 (1860): 20171219. doi:10.1098/rspb.2017.1219.
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The modern acoustic guitar developed with a wide, deep body was named the Dreadnought shape after this ship. In 2014, a newly classified genus of Titanosaurid sauropod dinosaurs was named Dreadnoughtus due to its gigantic size making it "virtually impervious" to attack, the name means "fears nothing" and was inspired by the battleship.
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Gastroliths have sometimes been called Morrison stones because they are often found in the Morrison Formation (named after the town of Morrison, west of Denver, Colorado), a late Jurassic formation roughly 150 million years old. Some gastroliths are made of petrified wood. Most known instances of preserved sauropod gastroliths are from Jurassic animals.
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Small for a sauropod, Nigersaurus was about long, and had a short neck. It weighed around , comparable to a modern elephant. Its skeleton was highly pneumatised (filled with air spaces connected to air sacs), but the limbs were robustly built. Its skull was very specialised for feeding, with large fenestrae and thin bones.
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"On the Habits and Pose of the Sauropod Dinosaurs, especially of Diplodocus". The American Naturalist 42 (502): 672–681 Tornier had independently arrived at the same conclusion and forcefully supported Hay's argument,Tornier, Gustav (1909). "Wie war der Diplodocus carnegii wirklich gebaut? ". Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 1909 (4): 193–209.
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Yunmenglong is an extinct genus of somphospondylan sauropod known from the late Early Cretaceous of Henan Province, central China. Its remains were discovered in the Haoling Formation of the Ruyang Basin. The type species is Yunmenglong ruyangensis, described in 2013 by Junchang Lü et al. on the basis of an incomplete postcranial skeleton.
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Australodocus (meaning "southern beam" from the Latin australis "southern" and the Greek dokos/δοκоς "beam") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago, in what is now Tanzania. Though initially considered a diplodocid, recent analyses suggest it may instead be a titanosauriform.
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This discovery supports the theory that there was a land bridge connecting South America to Africa 100 million years ago.Calvo, Jorge and Salgado, Leonardo (1996). A land bridge connection between South America and Africa during Albian-Cenomanian times based on sauropod dinosaur evidences. 39° Congresso Brasileiro de Geología , Anais (7): 392-393.
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Asiatosaurus (meaning "Asian lizard") was a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur which lived during the early Cretaceous.P. Upchurch, P. M. Barrett, and P. Dodson. 2004. Sauropoda. In D. B. Weishampel, H. Osmolska, and P. Dodson (eds.), The Dinosauria (2nd edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 259-322 [M. Carrano/M. Carrano/M.
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Zigongosaurus (meaning "Zigong lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic-Late Jurassic-age Shaximiao Formation of Zigong, Sichuan, China. Because of incomplete knowledge of Jurassic Chinese sauropods, it has been hard to interpret, with some sources assigning it to Omeisaurus, some to Mamenchisaurus, and some to its own genus.
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Barapasaurus ( ) is a genus of basal sauropod dinosaur from Early Jurassic rocks of India. The only species is B. tagorei. Barapasaurus comes from the lower part of the Kota Formation, that dates back to the Sinemurian and Pliensbachian stages of the early Jurassic. It is therefore one of the earliest known sauropods.
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Morinosaurus (meaning "Morini lizard", for an ancient people of northern France) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from an unnamed formation of Kimmeridgian-age Upper Jurassic rocks from Boulogne-sur-Mer, Départment du Pas-de-Calais, France. It is an obscure tooth genus sometimes referred to the Lower Cretaceous English wastebasket taxon Pelorosaurus.
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Dicraeosaurus (Gr. δικραιος, dikraios "bifurcated, double-headed" + Gr. σαυρος, sauros "lizard") is a genus of small diplodocoid sauropod dinosaur that lived in what is now Tanzania during the late Jurassic. It was named for the spines on the back of the neck. The first fossil was described by paleontologist Werner Janensch in 1914.
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Dinosaur remains, such the Sauropod Tazoudasaurus and the Basal Ceratosaur Berberosaurus are known from the unit, along with several undescribed genera.Haddoumi, H., Charrière, A., & Mojon, P. O. (2010). Stratigraphie et sédimentologie des «Couches rouges» continentales du Jurassique-Crétacé du Haut Atlas central (Maroc): implications paléogéographiques et géodynamiques. Geobios, 43(4), 433-451.
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The early evolution of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaurs. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 166:624-671 The type species from the Shaximiao Formation was described in 2005 as Daanosaurus zhangi. Adult size is unknown due to lack of fossil remains. The holotype (ZDM 0193), which is the only known specimen, was a juvenile.
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Sauropods are one of the most recognizable groups of dinosaurs, and have become a fixture in popular culture due to their impressive size. Complete sauropod fossil finds are rare. Many species, especially the largest, are known only from isolated and disarticulated bones. Many near-complete specimens lack heads, tail tips and limbs.
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Chuanjiesaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs from the middle Jurassic Period. They lived in what is now China. The type species, Chuanjiesaurus anaensis, was first described by Fang, Pang, Lü, Zhang, Pan, Wang, Li and Cheng in 2000.X. Fang, Pang, J., Y. Zhang, Pan, X. Wang, Li and Cheng. 2000.
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However, research on living animals has argued that most living tetrapods habitually raise the base of their necks when alert. Inference from bones about "neutral postures", which suggest a more horizontal position, may be unreliable.Taylor, M.P., Wedel, M.J., and Naish, D. (2009). "Head and neck posture in sauropod dinosaurs inferred from extant animals".
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The earliest known skeletal reconstruction of a sauropod dinosaur: C. supremus by John A. Ryder, 1877 Reconstruction of the same species based on more complete material by E.S. Christman, 1921 The first record of Camarasaurus comes from 1877, when a few scattered vertebrae were located in Colorado, by Oramel W. Lucas. Pursuing his long-running and acrimonious competition (known as the Bone Wars) with Othniel Charles Marsh, the paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope paid for the bones, and moving quickly, named them in the same year. For his part, Marsh later named some of his sauropod findings Morosaurus grandis, but most paleontologists today consider them to be a species of Camarasaurus Re: "Morosaurus" agilis. Such naming conflicts were common between the two rival dinosaur hunters.
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The ribs were similar to those of modern rhinoceroses, but the ribcage would have looked smaller in proportion to the long legs and large bodies, because modern rhinoceroses are comparatively short-limbed. The last vertebra of the lower back was fused to the sacrum, a feature found in advanced rhinoceroses. Like sauropod dinosaurs, Paraceratherium had pleurocoel-like openings (hollow parts of the bone) in their pre-sacral vertebrae, which probably helped to lighten the skeleton. 1923 skeletal reconstructions of B. grangeri (now P. transouralicum), in rhinoceros-like and slender versions The limbs were large and robust to support the animal's large weight, and were in some ways similar to and convergent with those of elephants and sauropod dinosaurs with their likewise graviportal (heavy and slow moving) builds.
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It would have been capable of closing its jaws quickly, capturing and bringing down prey by delivering powerful bites. The "chin" may have helped in resisting stress when a bite was delivered against prey. Giganotosaurus is thought to have been the apex predator of its ecosystem, and it may have fed on juvenile sauropod dinosaurs.
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Giganotosaurus was probably the apex predator in its ecosystem. It shared its environment with herbivorous dinosaurs such as the titanosaurian sauropod Andesaurus, and the rebbachisaurid sauropods Limaysaurus and Nopcsaspondylus. Other theropods include the abelisaurid Ekrixinatosaurus, the dromaeosaurid Buitreraptor, and the alvarezsaurid Alnashetri. Other reptiles include the crocodyliform Araripesuchus, sphenodontians, snakes, and the turtle Prochelidella.
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Rapetosaurus ( ) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur that lived in Madagascar from 70 to 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Only one species, Rapetosaurus krausei, has been identified. Like other sauropods, Rapetosaurus was a quadrupedal herbivore; it is calculated to have reached lengths of 15 metres (49 ft).
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Animals from other localities include the sauropods Lapparentosaurus and "Bothriospondylus" madagascariensis, and another sauropod based on teeth; theropods of the groups Abelisauridae, basal Ceratosauria, Coelurosauria, and possibly Tetanurae, along with tracks of the ichnogenus Kayentapus; thalattosuchian crocodyliforms; a mammal belonging to the Tribosphenida; plesiosaurs; and possibly ichthyosaurs. Silicified wood is also present in the strata.
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16 (3): e2001663. A large variety of marine life is known from the region, including sharks and bony fish, in addition to turtles, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs. A few rare, fragmentary dinosaur fossils are known, including an abelisaur and a sauropod. Other pterosaurs in the formation were originally only represented by the azhdarchid Phosphatodraco mauritanicus.
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Kotasaurus ( ; meaning "Kota Formation lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic period (Sinemurian–Pliensbachian). The only known species is Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis. It was discovered in the Kota Formation of Telangana, India and shared its habitat with the related Barapasaurus. So far the remains of at least 12 individuals are known.
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When this genus was first described, it was thought to be a titanosauriform of uncertain placement. In 2013, however, it was found to be a saltasaurid closely related to the Mongolian sauropod Opisthocoelicaudia. In 2019, this was again changed to a position outside of the Lithostrotia.Philip D. Mannion; Paul Upchurch; Xingsheng Jin; Wenjie Zheng. 2019.
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Sauropodomorpha, of which Neosauropoda is a subclade, first arose in the late Triassic. Around 230 million years ago, animals such as Eoraptor, the most basal known member of Dinosauria and also Saurischia, already displayed certain features of the Sauropod group. These derived characters began to distinguish them from Theropoda.Sereno, Paul; Martinez Ricardo; Alcober, Oscar. 2012.
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The eye openings of Bajadasaurus were exposed in top view of the skull, possibly allowing the animal to look forwards while feeding. Bajadasaurus was discovered in sedimentary rocks of the Bajada Colorada Formation, and its environment resembled a braided river system. It shared its environment with other dinosaurs including the sauropod Leinkupal and different theropods.
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The ratio of the front and rear limbs is 0.80. The tibia was straight and thick, with a length of 0.75 of the femur. Is considered the skeleton of an incomplete adult sauropod dinosaur. Tonganosaurus has been calculated in size, using Omeisaurus as reference the length of the skeleton is estimated to be 11.6 m.
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Ligabuesaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous which lived in what is now Argentina. The type species, Ligabuesaurus leanzai, was described by Jose Bonaparte, Gonzalez Riga, and Sebastián Apesteguía in 2006, based on a partial skeleton.José F. Bonaparte, Bernardo J. González Riga and Sebastián Apesteguía 2006. Ligabuesaurus leanzai gen.
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Avulsion surfaces, histosols, carbonaceous fossil roots, and silicified wood all provide evidence of a low-lying forested landscape with poor drainage. Other dinosaurs from the same locality include the ornithopod Talenkauen, the theropods Orkoraptor and Austrocheirus, and the sauropod Dreadnoughtus. Non-dinosaurian fauna known from the formation include crocodilians, turtles, bony fish, and lamniform sharks.
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As a diplodocid, it is probable that Dinheirosaurus possessed a whip-tail. If it did, it is likely that its tail could be used like a bullwhip, with supersonic speed. Being related to both Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, Dinheirosaurus probably possessed a squared snout. This means that it was probably a non-selective ground-feeding sauropod.
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Though Engelmann et al. (2004) dismissed ferns as a sauropod food source due to their relatively low caloric content,Engelmann, G.F., Chure, D.J., and Fiorillo, A.R. (2004). "The implications of a dry climate for the paleoecology of the fauna of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation." In Turner, C.E., Peterson, F., and Dunagan, S.P., eds.
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Otogosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur. The only species in this genus is Otogosaurus sarulai. This species was first described by Chinese scientist Zhao (赵喜进) in 2004. The species is named after Otog, the location of its discovery, and the Sarula, who are the indigenous peoples who live in the area.
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Volkheimeria (meaning "of Volkheimer") was an eusauropod sauropod dinosaur. It lived during the Middle Jurassic, approximately 160 million years ago. Fossils of Volkheimeria have been found in the Cañadón Asfalto Formation of the Cañadón Asfalto Basin in Patagonia, Argentina. The type (and only known) species, V. chubutensis, was described by José Bonaparte in 1979.
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Carrano] Its fossils have been found in China and Mongolia. Its type species is known only from teeth, making it difficult to rely on information until more specimens are found to expand our knowledge. The type species, Asiatosaurus mongoliensis, was described by Osborn, in 1924. It was the first sauropod genus named from East-Asia.
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Muyelensaurus (meaning "Muyelen lizard", after an indigenous name for the Colorado River in Argentina) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Argentina. It was more slender than other titanosaurs. Fossils have been recovered from the Portezuelo Formation in the Neuquén province of Patagonia. The type species is M. pecheni.
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Ferganasaurus (meaning "Fergana Valley lizard") was a genus of dinosaur first formally described in 2003 by Alifanov and Averianov. The type species is Ferganasaurus verzilini. It was a sauropod similar to Rhoetosaurus. The fossils were discovered in 1966 in Kyrgyzstan from the Balabansai Formation and date to the Callovian stage of the Middle Jurassic.
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Barapasaurus comes from clay and sandstone that belongs to the lower part of the Kota Formation. Other vertebrates of this part include another early sauropod, Kotasaurus, as well as the mammals Kotatherium, Indotherium and Indozostrodon. The upper part of the Kota Formation additionally contained a pterosaur, a turtle, two rhynchocephalians, a lepidosaur and some mammals.
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Life restoration Alternate reconstruction Fragmentary remains of this animal, including an articulated left forelimb (holotype), skull fragments, teeth, vertebrae and ribs, have been found in terrestrial deposits of the Villar del Arzobispo Formation of Riodeva (Teruel Province, Spain). A forelimb from Portugal.Mateus, O. (2009). The sauropod Turiasaurus riodevensis in the Late Jurassic of Portugal.
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Additional dinosaurs are represented by the fast-running, long-snouted tyrannosaurid Qianzhousaurus, the sauropod Gannansaurus, and the very sparse remains of hadrosaurid dinosaurs such as Microhadrosaurus (now a nomen dubium). Other reptiles that composed the fauna were the terrestrial or semiaquatic nanhsiungchelyid turtles Nanhsiungchelys and Jiangxichelys, squamates Chianghsia and Tianyusaurus, and the crocodilian Jiangxisuchus.
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Popular subjects commonly written about include frogs, reptiles, mammals, birds, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and cryptozoology. Together with colleagues Michael P. Taylor and Mathew Wedel, Naish also contributes to the Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week blog. In 2010, Naish published a collection of early articles from Tetrapod Zoology as a book titled Tetrapod Zoology Book One.
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Ganzhou is well renowned for its oviraptorid diversity, yielding oviraptorid egg clutches, skeletons, and six other genera: Banji, Jiangxisaurus, Nankangia, Ganzhousaurus, Huanansaurus, and Tongtianlong. The assemblage forms a distinct province, the "Ganzhou Dinosaurian Fauna". Other dinosaurs include the therizinosaurid Nanshiungosaurus, the tyrannosaurid Qianzhousaurus, the sauropod Gannansaurus, and the hadrosaurid Microhadrosaurus. Hadrosaurids are conspicuously rare.
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Protognathosaurus (meaning "early jaw lizard") is a genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. It was a sauropod found at Dashanpu in Sichuan in what is present-day China. In 1988 Zhang Yihun named and described the type species Protognathus oxyodon.Zhang, Y., 1988, The Middle Jurassic Dinosaur Fauna from Dashanpu, Zigong, Sichuan. Vol.
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The Bemaraha Formation is a Middle Jurassic (early Bajocian to early Bathonian) geological formation of the Morondava Basin of Madagascar. The lime mudstones, grainstones and limestones of the formation were deposited in lagoonal and reefal environments. Fossils of groups of invertebrates and theropod and sauropod tracks have been found in the formation.Tsiandro tracksite at Fossilworks.
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Europasaurus is a very small sauropod, measuring only as an adult. This length was estimated based on a partial femur, scaled to the size of a nearly complete Camarasaurus specimen. Younger individuals are known, from sizes of to the youngest juvenile at . The titanosaur Magyarosaurus is similarly sized, being compared to Europasaurus at approximately .
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"Dachongosaurus" is the informal name given to an undescribed genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of China. It is known from fossils including at least a partial articulated skeleton from the Dark Red Beds of the Lower Lufeng Series (Sinemurian stage) in Yunnan.Zhao, 1985. The reptilian fauna of the Jurassic in China.
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In 2001, several fragments of a sauropod skeleton were discovered in the Hasandong Formation in Hadong County, South Korea. Seven incomplete cervical vertebrae, one dorsal vertebrae, a partial clavicle, one chevron, and other small bones and bone fragments were found. One of the caudal vertebrae ascribed to Pukyongosaurus has bite marks from theropod teeth.
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The reason is that their traces left are large, but in proportion to the size, from animals, seem very light because the depth of imprint is low. Farlow, in 1992, had given a criterion for classifying sauropod tracks. Traces are distinguished wide as Brontopodus (Farlow et al., 1989) and the narrow track related to Breviparopus (Dutuit et al.
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The type specimen of Ohmdenosaurus consists of a tibia and a talus bone (astragalus). The tibia is approximately long with an estimated femur length of at least . This yields an estimated total body length of , which is relatively small for a sauropod. A re-evaluation of Ohmdenosaurus' size suggests a body length of and a weight of .
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Measuring approximately if reconstructed based on Diplodocus, early estimates for the length of the animal in life were between long. Due to the incomplete nature, such lengths–the longest of any known dinosaur and sauropod–were largely ignored. In 2018, Kenneth Carpenter renamed Amphicoelias fragillimus as the new genus Maraapunisaurus, and reclassified it from Diplodocidae to Rebbachisauridae.
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1908 and was supported by Gustav Tornier. This hypothesis was contested by William Jacob Holland, who demonstrated that a sprawling Diplodocus would have needed a trench through which to pull its belly. Finds of sauropod footprints in the 1930s eventually put Hay's theory to rest. Upright neck pose for D. carnegii based on Taylor et al.
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This formation is similar in age to the Lourinha Formation in Portugal and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. Saurophaganax and D. hallorum, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs.Foster, J. (2007). "Appendix." Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World.
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The metacarpals were concluded to belong to some indeterminate titanosauriform. The sacrum was reported lost in 2013. It was not analyzed and provisionally considered to represent an indeterminate sauropod, until such time that it could be relocated in the collections of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Only four out of the five sacral vertebrae are preserved.
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New Mexico's fossils first came to the attention of formally trained scientists by the mid-19th century. Major finds in the state include Coryphodon, a mummy of the ground sloth Nothrotherium, Triassic Coelophysis bonebeds, bonebeds of Triassic amphibians and the gigantic sauropod formerly known as Seismosaurus. The Triassic dinosaur Coelophysis bauri is the New Mexico state fossil.
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Dongyangosaurus is a genus of saltasaurid sauropod dinosaur from the early Late Cretaceous. The only species is Dongyangosaurus sinensis, from which only a single fragmentary skeleton is known, coming from the Zhejiang province of eastern China. It was described and named by Lü Junchang and colleagues Like other sauropods, Dongyangosaurus would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.
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The only skeleton (holotype DYM 04888) is stored in the Dongyang Museum (Dongyang, Zhejiang). It consists of ten dorsal vertebrae, the sacrum, two caudal vertebrae as well as the complete pelvis. The skeleton was found articulated. Dongyangosaurus was a midsized sauropod, measuring approximately 50 ft (15 m) in length and 15 ft (5 m) in height.
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Haestasaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, belonging to the Macronaria, that during the Early Cretaceous lived in the area of present-day England. The only species is Haestasaurus becklesii.Upchurch P., Mannion P.D., Taylor M.P., 2015, "The Anatomy and Phylogenetic Relationships of “Pelorosaurus“ becklesii (Neosauropoda, Macronaria) from the Early Cretaceous of England", PLoS ONE 10(6): e0125819.
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Comahuesaurus (meaning "Comahue lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur of the family Rebbachisauridae. It was found in the Lohan Cura Formation, in Argentina and lived during the Early Cretaceous, Aptian to Albian. The type species is C. windhauseni, named by Carballido and colleagues in 2012. It had originally been assigned to Limaysaurus by Salgado et al.
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Sanajeh (meaning "ancient gape" in Sanskrit) is a genus of late Cretaceous madtsoiid snake from western India. A fossil described in 2010 from the Lameta Formation was found coiled around an egg and an adjacent skeleton of a 50 cm (19 in) long sauropod dinosaur hatchling. This suggests that the snake preyed on hatchling sauropods at nesting sites.
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Nonetheless, the dinosaur mesothermy hypothesis requires further support to be confirmed. Fossil oxygen isotopes, which can reveal an organism's body temperature, should be particularly informative. Recently, a study of theropod and sauropod isotopes offered some support for dinosaur mesothermy. Feathered theropods are probably the best candidates for dinosaur endothermy, yet the examined theropods had relatively low body temperatures .
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The Great Plains Dinosaur Museum and Field Station is a paleontology museum located in Malta, Montana. Opened in 2008, the museum features exhibits of dinosaurs and other prehistoric fossils that were found in the area and state, including a Triceratops, Stegosaurus, sauropod, and hadrosaurs. The museum includes a fossil preparation lab and hosts dig trips. It is open seasonally.
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Manual ungual of LH V0011. In a quarry at Saihangaobi, Iren Dabasu Formation, Erlian basin, Sonid Left Banner (Inner Mongolia), numerous remains of the sauropod Sonidosaurus have been uncovered since 2001. Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing was asked to reenact the discovery of Sonidosaurus in April 2005 for a Japanese documentary. Xu obliged them by digging out a thighbone.
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The skull is largely unknown, perhaps with the exception of the brain case represented by specimen OUMNH J13596. A single tooth crown, OUMNH J13597, has provisionally been referred to the species. Cetiosaurus was, as any sauropod, a long-necked quadrupedal animal. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated the body length at sixteen metres, the weight at eleven tonnes.
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It was found in at the base of the Rutland Formation dating to the Bajocian. Staff from Leicester City Museums arrived on 20 June 1968. It was not confirmed that all the preserved material was collected. It is the most complete sauropod fossil, and one of the most complete specimens of a dinosaur, ever found in the United Kingdom.
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Itapeuasaurus (meaning "Itapeua lizard") is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Alcântara Formation from Maranhão in Brazil. The type and only species is Itapeuasaurus cajapioensis. Lindoso, R.M., Medeiros, M.A.A., Carvalho, I.S., Pereira, A.A., Mendes, I.D., Iori, F.V., Sousa, E.P., Arcanjo, S.H.S., & Silva, T.C.M. (2019). A new rebbachisaurid (Sauropoda: Diplodocoidea) from the middle Cretaceous of northern Brazil.
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This minor planet was named after Brontosaurus, a gigantic quadruped sauropod dinosaurs, which walked on all four legs and lived in the Upper Jurassic. Adult individuals measured up to 20 meters and had a weight of up to 20 tons. Many Fossils have been found in the United States. Brontosaurus is one of the best-known dinosaurs.
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They join the sauropod convoy, but are attacked by a pack of Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus, during which Crabb escapes in his strutter and the head of the ceratopsian strutter is ripped off. But the controls remain undamaged. However, afterward, it still works properly (and can be driven and controlled) without a head. But it behaves strangely.
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In 2004, a sauropod skeleton was found at the Mtuka River, twenty kilometres from Lake Rukwa. It was excavated between 2005 and 2008. In 2019, the type species Mnyamawamtuka moyowamkia was named and described by Eric Gorscak and Patrick M. O’Connor. The generic name is a contraction of the Kiswahili Mnyama wa Mtuka, the "Beast of the Mtuka".
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Kaatedocus is a genus of diplodocine flagellicaudatan sauropod known from the middle Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian stage) of northern Wyoming, United States. It is known from well-preserved skull and cervical vertebrae which were collected in the lower part of the Morrison Formation. The type and only species is Kaatedocus siberi, described in 2012 by Emanuel Tschopp and Octávio Mateus.
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Other fossils have been referred but some of these later were proven to have belonged to other types of dinosaur. A braincase e.g. (specimen CCGME 628/12457) was shown to be of a sauropod, while presumed frill material actually represented ankylosaur armour plates. Authentic material includes postorbitals with brow horn cores, teeth, a predentary and limb elements.
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Benjamin Creisler. Mosasauridae Translation and Pronunciation Guide . Dinosauria.com. Retrieved 2008-04-07. Liodon was one of the original genera included within the Mosasauridae upon its creation in 1853, along with Mosasaurus itself, Onchosaurus (later recognised to have been a batoid fish), Oplosaurus (a sauropod dinosaur), Macrosaurus (a historical mosasaur "wastebasket taxon") and Geosaurus (a thalattosuchian crocodyliform).
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Journal of vertebrate Paleontology, 29. is now seen as Zby atlanticus.Octávio Mateus, Philip D. Mannion & Paul Upchurch (2014) Zby atlanticus, a new turiasaurian sauropod (Dinosauria, Eusauropoda) from the Late Jurassic of Portugal, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 34:3, 618-634, DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2013.822875 The type species, Turiasaurus riodevensis, was formally described by Royo-Torres, Cobos & Alcala, in 2006.
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Lamanna first gained fame for the 2000 discovery of Paralititan in Egypt, called the "largest dinosaur ever discovered". The sauropod was 80 feet long and weighed between 40 and 50 tons. The discovery was the feature of a 2-hour documentary The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt. Beginning in 2004, Lamanna began work on a series of digs in China.
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Neosodon (meaning "new tooth") was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Tithonian-age Upper Jurassic Sables et Gres a Trigonia gibbosa of Départment du Pas-de-Calais, France.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Late Jurassic, Europe)." In: Weishampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; and Osmólska, Halszka (eds.): The Dinosauria, 2nd, Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Oplosaurus (meaning "armed or weapon lizard" or "armoured lizard"; see below for discussion) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Barremian-age Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, England. It is known from a single tooth usually referred to the contemporaneous "wastebasket taxon" Pelorosaurus, although there is no solid evidence for this.
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Gondwanatitan (meaning "giant from Gondwana") was a titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. Gondwanatitan was found in Brazil, at the time part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, in the late Cretaceous Period (70 mya). Like some other sauropods, Gondwanatitan was tall and ate tough shoots and leaves off of the tops of trees. G. faustoi's closest relative was Aeolosaurus.
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A new sauropod (Macronaria, Titanosauria) from the Adamantina Formation, Bauru Group, Upper Cretaceous of Brazil and the phylogenetic relationships of Aeolosaurini. Zootaxa. 3085: 1–33.França, M.A.G.; Marsola, J.C.d A.; Riff, D.; Hsiou, A.S.; Langer, M.C. (2016). "New lower jaw and teeth referred to Maxakalisaurus topai (Titanosauria: Aeolosaurini) and their implications for the phylogeny of titanosaurid sauropods". PeerJ.
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Modern reconstructed Camarasaurus skeleton The first sauropod fossil to be scientifically described was a single tooth known by the non-Linnaean descriptor Rutellum implicatum. This fossil was described by Edward Lhuyd in 1699, but was not recognized as a giant prehistoric reptile at the time.Lhuyd, E. (1699). Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia, sive lapidium aliorumque fossilium Britannicorum singulari figura insignium.
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"Damalasaurus" (meaning "Damala lizard") is the informal name given to a genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Early Jurassic. It was a sauropod, though its exact classification within the clade is unknown. Fossils of "Damalasaurus", including a rib, have been found in the Middle Daye Group of Tibet. Species attributed to this genus include "Damalasaurus laticostalis" and "D. magnus".
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"Kunmingosaurus" is an informally named primitive sauropod which lived during the Early Jurassic. Its fossils were found in Yunnan Province, China in 1954. The type and only species is "Kunmingosaurus wudingensis", invalidly coined by Zhao in 1985. It is known from fossils found in the Fengjiahe Formation (or the Lower Lufeng Series), including pelvic, hind limb, and vertebral material.
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"Lancanjiangosaurus" (alternative spelling "Lanchanjiangosaurus"; meaning "Lancangjiang lizard", named after the Lancangjiang River of China) is the informal name given to an as yet undescribed genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. The "type species", "L. cachuensis", was coined by Zhou in 1985, but remains a nomen nudum. It is known from the Dapuka Group of Tibet.
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Dinosaur remains among other vertebrates have been recovered from it around Lokitaung Gorge, though these mostly consist of heavily abraded, isolated bones of robust morphology like sauropod limb bones and caudal vertebrae.Weishampel, et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution" Pp. 517-607. in Weishampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; and Osmólska, Halszka (eds.): The Dinosauria, 2nd, Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Gigantosaurus (from the Greek "Γίγας" and "σαυρος", meaning "giant lizard") is a sauropod dinosaur genus from the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation of England. The type species, Gigantosaurus megalonyx, was named and described by Harry Govier Seeley in 1869.Seeley, H.G., 1869, Index to the Fossil Remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia from the Secondary System of Strata, arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge. III. Geological Magazine 7 Its syntype series consists of several separately discovered sauropod bones found in Cambridgeshire, including two caudal (tail) vertebrae (CAMSM J.29477 and CAMSM J.29478), the distal end of a tibia (CAMSM J.29483), a cast of the right radius (CAMSM J.29482), a cast of phalanx (CAMSM J.29479) and an osteoderm (CAMSM J.29481).
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In 2019, Alexander O. Averianov and Alexey V. Lopatin reported Nemegt sauropod vertebrae discovered in 1949 and some femora that differed from the same bones of Opisthocoelicaudia, and stated they probably belonged to Nemegtosaurus, thereby supporting that the two genera were distinct. In her 1977 description, Borsuk-Białynicka argued that different sauropod genera sharing the same habitat is nothing unusual, as is evident in the North American Morrison Formation. Currie and colleagues, however, stressed in 2018 that the dinosaur fauna of the Nemegt Formation was fundamentally different, as larger dinosaurs were present with only few species per clade, indicating a harsh and geographically restricted habitat. Definitive proof for the suggested synonymy is, however, still missing, and additional overlapping elements would be required before Opisthocoelicaudia and Nemegtosaurus can be formally declared synonyms.
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In his 1993 description, Zhao placed Klamelisaurus as the only genus in a new subfamily, Klamelisaurinae, for which he also provided a diagnosis. (A number of Zhao's distinguishing characteristics listed above pertain to Klamelisaurinae instead of Klamelisaurus directly.) He considered it to be "early to middle stage sauropod" with "transitional characters". As for the higher-level taxonomy of Klamelisaurus, the sauropod classification used by Zhao was an antiquated scheme attributed by Zhao to a 1958 publication by C. C. Young (although in 1983 he had attributed it to a 1961 publication by Oskar Kuhn): the Sauropoda was divided into the primitive Bothrosauropodoidea (misspelt as "Bothrosauropodea" by Zhao) and the derived ("advanced") Homalosauropodoidea (misspelt as "Homolosauropodoidea" and "Homolosauropodea" by Zhao), which could be distinguished based on dental and vertebral characteristics. He assigned Klamelisaurus to the former.
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A phylogenetic analysis of Ledumahadi mafube was performed by McPhee and colleagues, which found it to belong to a recently recognised clade of sauropodiformes called Lessemsauridae, including the closely related South African Antetonitrus and Lessemsaurus from Argentina. Another lessemsaurid described in 2018, Ingentia, could not be included in their analysis but was also recognised as belonging to Lessemsauridae. The results of McPhee and colleagues' analysis are shown in the cladogram below: The size of the taxon was deemed to be important in the wider picture of sauropod evolution, similar to its other lessemsaurid relatives. Living only a few million years after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, it indicates that this event must have either had only a small effect on body size within the sauropod lineage, or may have not affected it at all.
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Distal part of a left femur of a sauropod dinosaur regarded as the first dinosaur discovery of Thailand Beginning in 1970, the US Geological Survey conducted a mineral exploration in the Phu Wiang area of Khon Kaen province and discovered a type of uranium ore, coffinite, in association with copper ores, azurite and malachite. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) later participated. Between 1975 and 1980, the Department of Mineral Resources conducted a detailed drilling program and in 1976 Sudham Yaemniyom, a geologist, discovered a piece of bone on a streambed, Huai Pratu Tima, which was later identified as a distal part of the left femur of a sauropod dinosaur,Ingavat, R., Janvier, R., and Taquet, P. (1978) Decouverte en Thailande d'une portion de femur de dinosaure sauropode (Saurischia, Reptilia). C.R. Soc.Geol.
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The vast size difference between juveniles and adults may also have played a part in the different feeding and herding strategies. Cast of Toni, a juvenile diplodocid Since the segregation of juveniles and adults must have taken place soon after hatching, and combined with the fact that sauropod hatchlings were most likely precocial, Myers and Fiorillo concluded that species with age-segregated herds would not have exhibited much parental care. On the other hand, scientists who have studied age-mixed sauropod herds suggested that these species may have cared for their young for an extended period of time before the young reached adulthood. A 2014 study suggested that the time from laying the egg to the time of the hatching was likely to have been between 65 and 82 days.
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In 1907, German paleontologist Eberhard Fraas discovered the skeletons of two sauropods on an expedition to the Tendaguru Beds in German East Africa (now Tanzania). He classified both specimens in the new genus Gigantosaurus, with each skeleton representing a new species (G. africanus and G. robustus). However, this genus name had already been given to the fragmentary remains of a sauropod from England.
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The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus. Dinosaurs that lived alongside Barosaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus and Othnielosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus, Ornitholestes andFoster, J. (2007). "Appendix." Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World.
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The shinbone is very short and robust, its circumference measuring 53% of its length: in all other known non-sauropod Sauropodomorpha this ratio is lower than 0.49, with the exception of Antetonitrus and Blikanasaurus. The shinbone shaft tapers to below, both seen from the inside as viewed from the outside. The shinbone shaft has a straight front and rear edge, different from Antetonitrus.
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Natural History Museum, London. The most recent discoveries in the Kilmaluag Formation include Palaeoxonodon ooliticus and Wareolestes rex. and the tooth of a sauropod dinosaur. Comparisons between the Kilmaluag Formation and other sites in the UK and rest of the world suggest that the fauna represented there is globally significant, due to the rarity of fossils from the Middle Jurassic.
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Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 168:98-206. The cladistic analysis of Patagotitan recovered Malarguesaurus as a close relative of the Asian Ruyangosaurus.José L. Carballido; Diego Pol; Alejandro Otero; Ignacio A. Cerda; Leonardo Salgado ; Alberto C. Garrido ; Jahandar Ramezani ; Néstor R. Cúneo ; Javier M. Krause (2017). "A new giant titanosaur sheds light on body mass evolution among sauropod dinosaurs".
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The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Barosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus. Dinosaurs that lived alongside Stokesosaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus and Othnielosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Ornitholestes andFoster, J. (2007). "Appendix." Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World.
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Stephen Poropat is a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at Swinburne University of Technology. From October 2011–January 2015 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden. In 2015 he revised Diamantinasaurus matildaePoropat, S.F., Upchurch, P., Mannion, P.D., Hocknull, S.A., Kear, B.P., Sloan, T., Sinapius, G.H.K. & Elliott, D.A., 2015. Revision of the sauropod dinosaur Diamantinasaurus matildae Hocknull et al.
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The specimens were unearthed at the "Matilda site" not far northwest of town, on Elderslie Station (site's position roughly ), and at the "Triangle Paddock Site" right nearby. Another sauropod, Savannasaurus, was also found in this area, along with the as-of-yet unnamed "Elliot". The town also lent its name to the geological formation in which the fossils were found, the Winton Formation.
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Jainosaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur of India and wider Asia, which lived in the Maastrichtian (approximately 68 million years ago). A herbivorous quadruped, an adult Jainosaurus would have measured around eighteen metres long and held its head six metres high. No accurate estimate of the weight has yet been made. The humerus of the type specimen is 134 centimetres long.
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For instance, a classic 1910 reconstruction by Oliver P. Hay depicts two Diplodocus with splayed lizard-like limbs on the banks of a river. Hay argued that Diplodocus had a sprawling, lizard-like gait with widely splayed legs,Hay, Dr. Oliver P., "On the Habits and Pose of the Sauropod Dinosaurs, especially of Diplodocus." The American Naturalist, Vol. XLII, Oct.
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A year later, a second note appeared in the same journal and extends his discoveries to the southwestern Kem Kem. In 1954, Lavocat described a new species of sauropod, Rebbachisaurus, discovered in the region. In addition, in 1955 he described a new genus of theropod, Majungasaurus. In 1960, Lavocat returned to Africa and described a second species of Rebbachisaurus, R. tamesnensis.
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Finds of previously documented species included both sizable and hatchling Apatosaurus, hatchling Camarasaurus, several Camptosaurus of different age groups, and Stegosaurus fossils. The new theropoda species that would come to be known as Saurophaganax was also discovered there. By December 1939, excavation had commenced on the Stovall team's fifth quarry. The most significant remains uncovered there are referable to the large sauropod Diplodocus.
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By the end of the month, they had discovered a new species of sauropod, Brontosaurus excelsus, that would end up mounted in the Yale Peabody Museum. This species has since been reclassified as Apatosaurus excelsus. In August William Reed's assistant, E. G. Ashley discovered a twelfth quarry site. They discovered the fossils of a new Stegosaurus species here, S. ungulatus.
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Description géologique du Jura bernois et de quelques districts adjacents. Matériaux pour la carte géologique de la Suisse, 8: 1–357 In 1920, Werner Janensch reassigned the tooth to the genus Labrosaurus. However, in 1922, Janensch realized the vertebrae belonged to a sauropod, so he wrote to Friedrich von Huene, who gave them the name Ornithopsis greppini.Huene, F. von. 1922.
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Gongxianosaurus is a genus of basal sauropod dinosaur from the early Jurassic Period (Toarcian stage). The only species is Gongxianosaurus shibeiensis. Based on four fragmentary to complete specimens found in China (Sichuan Province), it is one of the most completely known early sauropods. The skeleton is known in large part, missing both the hand and the majority of the skull.
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Gongxianosaurus fossils were found near the village of Shibei (Sichuan province) in purple mudstones pertaining to the Ziliujing Formation (Dongyueshan Member). These rocks are considered to be Toarcian in age (182.7 to 174.1 mya). Thus, Gongxianosaurus is geologically younger than the "prosauropod" Lufengosaurus but older than the basal sauropod Shunosaurus. The fossils were found in May 1997 during a geological exploration.
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Pitekunsaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Anacleto Formation of Neuquén, Argentina. It was described by L. Filippi and A. Garrido in 2008. The type species is P. macayai. The generic name is derived from Mapudungun pitekun, meaning "to discover", the epitheton honours the discoverer, oil company explorer Luis Macaya, who found the fossil in April 2004.
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The Forest Sandstone is a geological formation in southern Africa, dating to roughly between 200 and 190 million years ago and covering the Hettangian to Sinemurian stages of the Jurassic Period in the Mesozoic Era. As its name suggests, it consists mainly of sandstone. Fossils of the prosauropod dinosaur Massospondylus and the primitive sauropod Vulcanodon have been recovered from the Forest Sandstone.
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Tarbosaurus lived in a humid floodplain criss-crossed by river channels. In this environment, it was an apex predator, probably preying on other large dinosaurs like the hadrosaur Saurolophus or the sauropod Nemegtosaurus. Tarbosaurus is represented by dozens of fossil specimens, including several complete skulls and skeletons. These remains have allowed scientific studies focusing on its phylogeny, skull mechanics, and brain structure.
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Tonganosaurus (named for the town of Tong'an from where it was found) is a genus of mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur, similar to Omeisaurus. It is known from one specimen consisting of twenty vertebrae, a front limb and pectoral girdle, and a complete hind limb with partial hip. It lived during the early Jurassic period (Pliensbachian, Yimen Formation), in what is now China.Yang, C.Y. 2013.
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186 and 208. The neural spines on its back were very tall. The neural spines of the cervical and dorsal vertebrae are not V-shaped but they have a simple and straight form like an I. Its teeth were curved, unlike those of Diplodocus which were pencil-shaped. Another distinct characteristic of this sauropod is its phylogenetic relationship to Rebbachisaurus from Morocco.
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Qinlingosaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Asia. The type species, Qinlingosaurus luonanensis, was named by Xue Xiangxu, Zhang Yunxiang and Bi Xianwu in 1996. The generic name comes from the Qinling mountain range of Shaanxi Province in China, where the first fossils were recovered at Hongtuling. The specific name refers to the provenance near Luonang.
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Gobititan is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Barremian faunal stage of the Early Cretaceous, approximately 129-125 million years ago. The name of this genus, is derived from the Gobi desert region and the Titans of Greek mythology, which is a reference to its large body size. The specific name shenzhouensis, is derived from "Shenzhou", an ancient name for China.
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20, pp. 351–372 Hocknull suggested that Austrosaurus mckillopi differed only slightly from the QMF 7292, the holotype of Wintonotitan wattsii, and should be considered a nomen dubium. Recently, Poropat et al. (2017) reported additional sauropod material from the Austrosaurus type locality and assigned them to the Austrosaurus holotype, finding the genus to be a valid titanosauriform tentatively assignable to Somphospondyli.
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Omeisaurus (meaning "Omei lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Period (Bathonian-Callovian stage) of what is now China. Its name comes from Mount Emei, where it was discovered in the lower Shaximiao Formation of Sichuan Province. Like other sauropods, Omeisaurus was herbivorous and large. It measured 20.2 metres (66 ft) long, and weighed 9.8 tonnes.
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The dinosaur is a Saltasaurus (identified only as "sauropod"). It sneezes on the Time Rover and guests may smell the plants it eats. The rover starts to pull away again. The timer that counts down to the asteroid that causes the mass extinction claims that the asteroid is going to strike in 90 seconds, and the rover starts to pick up the pace.
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Size compared with a human Turiasaurus is believed to be the largest dinosaur ever found in Europe, and is among the largest dinosaurs known. It was originally estimated at in length and with a weight of 40 to 48 tonnes,Royo-Torres, R., Cobos, A., and Alcalá, L. (2006). "A Giant European Dinosaur and a New Sauropod Clade." Science 314: 1925-1927.
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Mature blue whales can reach in length and the record-holder blue whale was recorded at . Another poorly known sauropod that shares similar size estimates to Bruhathkayosaurus is Maraapunisaurus fragillimus, which was based on a now-missing dorsal vertebra. In 2006 Kenneth Carpenter used Diplodocus as a guide and estimated Maraapunisaurus to be in length and weigh only about .Carpenter, K. (2006).
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Shingopana (meaning "wide neck" in Swahili) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod from the Lower Cretaceous (Albian age) Galula Formation of Tanzania. It is known from only the type species, S. songwensis. Gorsak & O'Connor's phylogenetic testing suggest Shingopana is more closely related to the South American titanosaur family of Aeolosaurini than any of the titanosaurs found so far in North & South Africa.
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University of California Press:Berkeley 259-322. A 2010 overview of Late Jurassic sauropods from Dorset noted that Ischyrosaurus shared features seen in both Rebbachisauridae and Titanosauriformes, but lacked features to nail down its exact phylogenetic position.Paul M. Barrett, Roger B.J. Benson and Paul Upchurch (2010). "Dinosaurs of Dorset: Part II, the sauropod dinosaurs (Saurischia, Sauropoda) with additional comments on the theropods".
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Isanosaurus (meaning "Isan [north-eastern Thailand] lizard") was a sauropod dinosaur from Thailand. It was originally dated to approximately 210 million years ago during the Late Triassic (late Norian to Rhaetian stages), which would make it one of the oldest known sauropods. Its age was later considered uncertain, and may be as young as Late Jurassic. The only species is Isanosaurus attavipachi.
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Size comparison of selected giant sauropod dinosaurs The sauropods' most defining characteristic was their size. Even the dwarf sauropods (perhaps 5 to 6 metres, or 20 feet long) were counted among the largest animals in their ecosystem. Their only real competitors in terms of size are the rorquals, such as the blue whale. But, unlike whales, sauropods were primarily terrestrial animals.
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However more recently this enormous vertebra has been reclassified as a Barosaurus vertebra, by Mike Taylor and Matt Wedel. The assignment of the more complete specimen, WDC DMJ-021, to Supersaurus suggests that in most respects it was very similar in anatomy to Apatosaurus but less robustly built with especially elongated cervical vertebrae, resulting in one of the longest known sauropod necks.
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Melanorosaurus (meaning "Black Mountain Lizard", from the Greek melas/μέλας, "black", oros/ὄρος, "mountain" + sauros/σαῦρος, "lizard") is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period. A herbivore from South Africa, it had a large body and sturdy limbs, suggesting it moved about on all fours. Its limb bones were massive and weighty, like sauropod limb bones.
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These specimens show morphology similar to members of Faveoloolithidae, supporting the referral of Sphaerovum to that oofamily.Soto, M., Perea, D., and Cambiaso, A.V. (2012) "First sauropod (Dinosauria: Saurischia) remains from the Guichón Formation, Late Cretaceous of Uruguay" Journal of South American Earth Sciences 33(1):68-79. DOI: 10.1016/j.jsames.2011.08.003Casadío, S., Manera, T., Parras, A., & Montalvo, C. I. (2002).
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"Megacervixosaurus" (meaning "big neck lizard") is the informal name given to an as yet undescribed genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous. It was a titanosaur sauropod which lived in what is now China. The type species, "Megacervixosaurus tibetensis", was coined by Chinese paleontologist Zhao Xijin in 1985. "Megacervixosaurus" has never been formally described, and remains a nomen nudum.
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"Pakisaurus" (meaning "Pakistan lizard") is an informal taxon of titanosaurian sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Balochistan, western Pakistan. The proposed species is "P. balochistani", and it was validly named by M. Sadiq Malkani in 2006, based on four tail vertebrae, found in the Maastrichtian-age Vitakri Member of the Pab Formation. Three additional tail vertebrae have been assigned to it.
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Efforts have been made to halt de-population by attracting immigrants from South America and Romania. This has had some success, helping keeping village facilities alive. In 2008 palaeontologists discovered an intact specimen of a previously unknown species of sauropod dinosaur at a site near Morella. The animal was believed to have lived in the early Cretaceous period, approximately 120 million years ago.
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The Black Peaks Formation is a geological formation in Texas whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous. Dinosaur remains (from the sauropod Alamosaurus) have been among the fossils reported from the formation.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Late Cretaceous, North America)." In: Weishampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; and Osmólska, Halszka (eds.): The Dinosauria, 2nd, Berkeley: University of California Press.
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Gilmore, at the Smithsonian, along with Stewart, first described the species as a sauropod in the January 1945 issue of the Journal of Paleontology, a classification made in error and without positive evidence. Gilmore only deemed the species a sauropod by process of elimination; when he was left with the possibilities of Hadrosauridae and Sauropoda, he dismissed the former, saying, "The more elongate centra of the Chronister specimen, with the possible exception of Hypsibema crassicauda Cope, and the presence of chevron facets only on the posterior end appear sufficient to show that these vertebral centra do not pertain to a member of the Hadrosauridae." The species, first called Neosaurus missouriensis, was renamed to Parrosaurus missouriensis later that year by Gilmore and Stewart because the name "Neosaurus" was preoccupied. However, Gilmore died soon after, and the bones were left untouched for several decades.
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Diplodocoidea is a superfamily of sauropod dinosaurs, which included some of the longest animals of all time, including slender giants like Supersaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, and Amphicoelias. Most had very long necks and long, whip-like tails; however, one family (the dicraeosaurids) are the only known sauropods to have re-evolved a short neck, presumably an adaptation for feeding low to the ground. This adaptation was taken to the extreme in the highly specialized sauropod Brachytrachelopan. A study of snout shape and dental microwear in diplodocoids showed that the square snouts, large proportion of pits, and fine subparallel scratches in Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Nigersaurus, and Rebbachisaurus suggest ground-height nonselective browsing; the narrow snouts of Dicraeosaurus, Suuwassea, and Tornieria and the coarse scratches and gouges on the teeth of Dicraeosaurus suggest mid-height selective browsing in those taxa.
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Alternate view of mount The original description of the species noted strong similarities between the osteology of Huabeisaurus and other Cretaceous East Asian sauropods, and in general, previous studies have pointed to some East Asian Cretaceous sauropod (like Nemegtosaurus and Phuwiangosaurus) as the sister taxon of Huabeisaurus. Since 2000, the year of the original description of Huabeisaurus, 17 new sauropod species have been erected from the Cretaceous of East Asia. Many authors have noted similarities among Cretaceous East Asian sauropods, often suggesting that several of these taxa belong to a clade grounded on a genus with well-known anatomy (like Nemegtosauridae, Opisthocoelicaudinae, and Euhelopodidae). Cladistic support was recently presented for a Euhelopodidae that consisted of exclusively Cretaceous-aged members, in contrast with traditional studies and early cladistic analyses that placed the existence of a Euhelopodidae with Jurassic forms.
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Lapparent, A. F. de, & Zbyszewski, G., 1957, Les Dinosauriens du Portugal, Mémoires des Services Geologiques du Portugal. Nouvelle série, numéro 2, 63 pp In 1962 R. F. Kingham assigned Brachiosaurus, including all its species, to Astrodon as a subgenus.Kingham, R. F., 1962, "Studies of the sauropod dinosaur Astrodon Leidy", Proceedings of the Washington Junior Academy of Sciences, 1: 38–44 Carpenter and Tidwell (2005) accepted Hatcher's argument that there is only one species of sauropod dinosaur known from the Arundel Formation and that Astrodon johnstoni is the senior synonym of Pleurocoelus nanus (as well as P. altus) in the first in-depth description of this dinosaur. The majority of the bones of Astrodon are of juveniles, and Carpenter and Tidwell considered the two species named by Marsh, P. nanus and P. altus, as different growth stages of Astrodon johnstoni.
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Rayososaurus is a genus of plant-eating sauropod dinosaur of the superfamily Diplodocoidea. It was found in the Candeleros Formation, but was named Rayososaurus after the Rayoso Member, which later has been elevated to the older Rayoso Formation. The formations are located in the Neuquén Basin of northern Patagonia, Argentina. Rayososaurus lived during the Cenomanian epoch of the Late Cretaceous, about 99 to 96 million years ago.
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The investigations were started in 1969. Dinosaur bones were reported in earlier investigations. Based on the investigations carried out by Codrea and Dica in 2005, they have assigned the age of these formations to the Maastrichtian-Miocene age (also conjectured as of Eggenburgian-Ottnangian age). Some of the rare fossils found here are also vertebrates and one of these is of sauropod caudal vertebra.
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Size comparison of the most complete members of the sauropod family Dicraeosauridae Dicraeosaurids are differentiated from their sister group, diplodocids, and from most sauropods by their relatively small body size and short necks. Dicraeosaurids are advanced sauropods within the monophyletic clade Neosauropoda, which is generally characterized by gigantism. The relatively small body size of dicraeosaurids make them an important outlier relative to other taxa in Neosauropoda.
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In 1906, George Reber Weiland reported the presence of worn and polished quartz pebbles associated with the remains of plesiosaurs and sauropod dinosaurs and interpreted these stones as gastroliths.Wieland, G. R., 1906, Dinosaurian gastroliths: Science, v. 23, p. 819-821. In 1907, Barnum Brown found gravel in close association with the fossil remains of the duck-billed hadrosaur Claosaurus and interpreted it as gastroliths.
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Size comparison between Saltasaurus and a human. Saltasaurines are relatively small sauropods with the general body shape of a small head, long neck, four limbs, and a long tail. They range from the modest length of Rocasaurus around , to the comparably larger length of of Neuquensaurus. However, a currently unnamed fragmentary sauropod from Madagascar may turn out to be a saltasaurine longer than Neuquensaurus.
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All of the material comes from the famous Dashanpu Quarry near Zigong in China, and is housed in the dinosaur museum there. Abrosaurus and at least 4 other species of sauropod are known from the Lower Shaximiao Formation (also called Xiashaximiao) at Dashanpu. These sediments are dated from the Bathonian to Callovian stages of the Middle Jurassic Period, or about 168 to 161 million years ago.
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This reduction in distribution occurs immediately following the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary. The brachiosaurid distribution in the Early Cretaceous has been interpreted as a result of regional extinctions in Europe, Africa, and South America. Overall, the Early Cretaceous seems to be a time of reduced sauropod diversity worldwide. It has been argued that this change may be due to an extinction event at the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary.
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The development of entaxony in Aardonyx provides further evidence for its reduced cursorial ability and wider gauge-gait, which is thought to have preceded obligatory quadrupedalism in sauropodomorphs. Previously, it was thought that entaxony developed after the divergence of Vulcanodon due to the presence of mesaxony in the genus.Carrano, M. T. (2005). The evolution of sauropod locomotion: morphological diversity of a secondarily quadrupedal radiation.
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This represents the first formal naming of a sauropod species in North America. Two years later a chance find would bring instant fame to the fossils of the John Day region of Oregon. In 1861, a company of soldiers arrived in Oregon's Fort Dalles after visiting the Crooked River region brought back fossil bones and teeth, among which was a well- preserved rhinoceros jaw.
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The partnership would be fruitful that year and several major discoveries happened. They found a ninth site early in July that would be the most productive of any fossil site in the Morrison Formation. In September, they made another major discovery. By the end of the month, they had identified a new species of sauropod, Brontosaurus excelsus, that would end up mounted in the Yale Peabody Museum.
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By the 1850s, formal scientific investigation of the local fossils had commenced. Early discoveries included Astrodon, the first scientifically described sauropod from North America. Maryland was home to one of the most significant Pleistocene mammal discoveries in American history: the early 20th century discovery of Pleistocene fossils in an Allegany County cave. The Miocene murex snail Ecphora gardnerae gardnerae is the Maryland state fossil.
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D. M. Wilkinson and G. D. Ruxton considered the available nutrients as a driving factor for sauropod gigantism. Sauropods appeared during the late triassic period and became extinct at the end of the cretaceous period. During this time period, herbivorous plant matter such as conifers, ginkgos, cycads, ferns and horsetails may have been dietary choice of Sauropods. These plants have a high carbon/ nitrogen content.
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Local residents guided him to yet further carnivorous dinosaur tracks preserved in situ along the Paluxy River. While he was cleaning mud from these footprints, he noticed another kind of footprint, apparently left by a long- necked sauropod dinosaur. Brown was intrigued by the find. At the time, Dr. E. H. Sellards of the University of Texas was organizing the Texas Statewide Paleontological Survey.
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On land the state was home to long necked sauropod dinosaurs, who left behind footprints and ostrich dinosaurs such as Arkansaurus. During the Cenozoic the state's seas were inhabited by marine invertebrates and sharks, although the waters were gradually shrinking away. During the Ice Age, the state's climate cooled. Local grasslands and forests spread that were inhabited by creatures such as mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths.
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Sauropod tracks document that these animals traveled in groups composed of several different species, at least in Oxfordshire, England, although there is not evidence for specific herd structures. There is evidence that Patagonian titanosaurian sauropods (1997 discovery) nested in large groups. A dinosaur embryo (pertaining to the prosauropod Massospondylus) was found without teeth, indicating that some parental care was required to feed the young dinosaur.
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Bonnan, Matthew F. and Adam M. Yates, "A new description of the forelimbs of the basal sauropodomorph Melanorosaurus: implications for the evolution of pronation, manus shape and quadrupedalism in sauropod dinosaurs". In Barrett & Batten (eds.), Evolution and Palaeobiology (2007), pp. 157–168. Yates (2007) placed Antetonitrus, Melanorosaurus, and Blikanasaurus as basal sauropods and declined to use the term Prosauropoda, as he considered it synonymous with Plateosauridae.
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All known fossils come from an area of 2,400 m² near the village of Yamanpalli in Telangana, approximately forty kilometres north of the Barapasaurus type locality. These finds, altogether 840 skeletal parts, were found in the late 1970s. In 1988 they were named and described by P.M. Yadagiri as a new genus and species of sauropod, Kotasaurus yamanpalliensis. The generic name refers to the Kota Formation.
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The Lameta Formation is a sedimentary rock formation found in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, India. It is of Maastrichtian age (Upper Cretaceous), and is notable for its dinosaur fossils. Many dubious names have been created for isolated bones, but several genera of dinosaurs from these rocks are well-supported, including the titanosaur sauropod Isisaurus, the abelisaurs Indosaurus, Indosuchus, Laevisuchus, and Rajasaurus and possible stegosaurs.Weishampel et al.
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The Upper Cretaceous of Zhejiang is known for its fossil dinosaur eggs. Skeletal remains are rarely found; the only described dinosaurs are the sauropod Jiangshanosaurus from the Jinhua Formation, the theropod Chilantaisaurus zhejiangensis, and the nodosaurid Zhejiangosaurus from the Chaochuan Formation. Dongyangosaurus comes from the Fangyan Formation. The age of this unit is not clear yet; however, it is considered early Upper Cretaceous by most researchers.
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He is thought by some fans to be Dopey, the infant sauropod from the original series, all grown up. He once helped Annie down from a tree when Kevin took away a ladder, and saved Tasha from the Sleestaks. Big Guy and Momma TwoLegs can sometimes be seen at the lake. In "Life's a Beach", Big Guy is seen with another Apatosaurus, possibly his mate.
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The only specimens belonging to Megalosaurus bucklandii are from the Lower/Middle Bathonian of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. No material from outside of the Bathonian formations of England can be referred to Megalosaurus. It lived alongside the theropods Cruxicheiros, Iliosuchus and Streptospondylus, and the sauropods Cardiodon, Cetiosaurus, and possibly Cetiosauriscus. The pterosaur Rhamphocephalus, and indeterminate sauropod and ornithopod remains have also been found alongside fossils of Megalosaurus.
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Astrophocaudia (meaning "non-twisting tail"; alternately "star tail" in reference to Astrodon) is a genus of somphospondylan sauropod known from the late Early Cretaceous (Albian stage) of Texas, United States. Its remains were discovered in the Trinity Group. The type species is Astrophocaudia slaughteri, described in 2012 by Michael D. D’Emic while a doctoral student at the Museum of Paleontology of the University of Michigan, USA.
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In 1968, a specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Cetiosaurus oxoniensis was found in the Williamson Cliffe Quarry, close to Great Casterton in adjacent Rutland. Some long, it is about 170 million years old, from the Aalenian or Bajocian era of the Jurassic period, It is one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons found in the UK. It was installed in 1975 in the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.
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1909 but the hypothesis was contested by W. J. Holland, who maintained that a sprawling Diplodocus would have needed a trench to pull its belly through.Holland, William Jacob (1910). "A Review of Some Recent Criticisms of the Restorations of Sauropod Dinosaurs Existing in the Museums of the United States, with Special Reference to that of Diplodocus carnegii in the Carnegie Museum". The American Naturalist 44: 259–283.
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Tornier's frog, Litoria tornieri, which is an Australian endemic, was named after him, as was a large sauropod dinosaur found around 1910 in the Tendaguru formations of German East Africa, Tornieria africanus (Fraas). Also, Tornier is commemorated in the scientific names of two species of African reptiles: a snake, Crotaphopeltis tornieri; and a tortoise, Malacochersus tornieri.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles.
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The Dalton Wells quarry has also yielded specimens of Venenosaurus (a brachiosaurid sauropod), the theropod dinosaurs Utahraptor and Nedcolbertia, plus a tall-spined iguanodontian,Scheetz, R., B. Britt, and J. Higgerson. 2010. A large, tall- spined iguanodontid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (Early Albian) basal Cedar Mountain Formation of Utah. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Program and Abstracts Book, 28(3): 158A.
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In 1928 a team from the American Museum of Natural History, headed by Roy Chapman Andrews, at On Gong Gol near Hukongwulong in Inner Mongolia, in Quarry 714 discovered a sauropod tooth. In 1933 Charles W. Gilmore, based on this fossil, named and described the type species Mongolosaurus haplodon. The generic name refers to Mongolia. The specific name is derived from Greek haploos, "single", and odon, "tooth".
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There are two types of sauropod skulls from the Maastrichtian of India, the first type is from Jainosaurus and the other is from Isisaurus. While Jainosaurus had a broad and flat cranium, the skull of Isisaurus was robust and compact. Additionally, the angle between the occipital bone and occipital condyle is different in the two taxa. In the specimen from Dongargaon it is equal to 120°.
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When birds were typically found to have 1.05% of their body weight gastroliths, the sauropod Diplodocus, which had the highest amount of gastroliths, only amassed to 0.03% body weight. This means that since the other sauropods Dinheirosaurus and Cedarosaurus had less gastroliths to body mass, an avian-style gastric mill is unlikely to have evolved in sauropods, and they instead might have used gastroliths to absorb minerals.
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During the 20th century, many significant fossil trackway discoveries were made in the western United States. In the 1930s and 1940s, Roland T. Bird discovered the tracks of large sauropod and theropod dinosaurs in Texas. He excavated a major section of the track ways on behalf of the American Museum of Natural History. This was the first large scale excavation of fossil footprints in history.
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The Maevarano Formation is a Late Cretaceous sedimentary rock formation found in the Mahajanga Province of northwestern Madagascar. It is most likely Maastrichtian in age, and records a seasonal, semiarid environment with rivers that had greatly varying discharges. Notable animal fossils recovered include the theropod dinosaur Majungasaurus, the early bird Vorona, the flying dromaeosaur Rahonavis, the titanosaurian sauropod Rapetosaurus, and the giant frog Beelzebufo.
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Nomadic Fula cattle-herders also come into town regularly to sell their wares. Although isolated, the town lies on a major trans-Saharan route linking Algeria to Nigeria. The nearest cities are Agadez to the north and Zinder to the south. The mayor of Aderbissinat is Mohamed Echika, who has supported the Niger Project SNHM into the investigations into a new sauropod dinosaur Spinophorosaurus nigerensis.
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Later research by Sues et al. (2011) supports that Staurikosaurus and the related genus Herrerasaurus are theropods and evolved after the sauropod line had split from the Theropoda. Mortimer points out that Benedetto (1973) and Galton (1985) were the first to recognize that Staurikosaurus and Herrerasaurus were more closely related to each other than to sauropodomorphs or avepods, placing them both in the Herrerasauridae and Herrerasauria.Galton, 1985.
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Pp. 545–549. Dinosaurs of France It has never been formally given a species name, but is often seen as N. praecursor, which actually comes from a different animal. Often in the past, it had been assigned to the wastebasket taxon Pelorosaurus, but restudy has suggested that it could be related to Turiasaurus, a roughly-contemporaneous giant Spanish sauropod. It is only known from six teeth.
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Ornithomimisaur tracks of similar age are known from north of Moab, Utah, at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite, in the Ruby Ranch Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation (Early Cretaceous). This tracksite also preserves the tracks of ankylosaur, hadrosaur, sauropod and several size classes of theropod dinosaurs, along with crocodiles and birds. A similar fauna has been noted from the Trinity Group in Arkansas.
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Another derived, sauropod like feature was a bony plate that lined the tooth row laterally and became thicker towards the tip of the snout. This plate may have hindered the teeth to be displaced while defoliating plants. The dentary was deep. However, as in prosauropods, it became lower towards the tip of the snout, while in sauropods the dentary became deeper, forming a very deep symphysis.
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Tendaguria is thus a highly derived or apomorphic sauropod; the axial musculature probably shifted from the neural spines to the dorsal surface of the transverse processes. Other autapomorphies are: a depression in the upper part of the outer side of each prezygapophysis; deep depressions in the front side of the transverse processes combined with shallow depressions in the rear side; the possession of robust epipophyses.
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Since embryos are unknown in cairanoolithid eggs, the identity of their parent is uncertain. They have long been considered to be eggs of titanosaurs or ornithopods (like Rhabdodon). However, numerous characteristics distinguish Cairanoolithus from sauropod eggs (oofamilies Megaloolithidae and Faveoloolithidae), even though they bear superficial similarities in size and shape. Cairanoolithus's columnar eggshell units are quite unlike the fan-shaped ones seen in Megaloolithus, Faveoloolithus, or Fusioolithus.
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234 Harry Govier Seeley described the fossils and named two genera: Avalonia (preoccupied; now Avalonianus) and Picrodon; both are based solely on teeth. A second species, P. solus, was supposedly named by Carole J. Burrow in 2012, based on Early Jurassic (Hettangian) remains. It was classified as a basal sauropod, sharing some similarities with prosauropods. Its fossils were quarried in 1884 in Manchester, Connecticut.
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This goal was reached and exceeded within five hours of the campaign's launch. The campaign concluded after one month, with a total of pledged. Sauropod credited Markus Persson, the creator of the game Minecraft who publicly approved of the game, with leading the Kickstarter campaign to the success it had. Beta versions of the game were later shared with backers who had pledged or more.
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"Wiman's Law" states that the stolon of dendroid graptolites divides in groups of three: "one branch went into the bitheca, one into the autotheca, and one continued up along the stipe." He is recognized for his contributions to paleontology in the names of the extinct penguins Archaeospheniscus wimani and Palaeospheniscus wimani, the fossil turtle Dracochelys wimani, the ichthyosaur Wimanius and the sauropod dinosaur Borealosaurus wimani.
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The Gobi Desert dinosaur death traps may have been sauropod footprints that have been filled with a mixture of thick mud and sandstone in the former wetland. The "Valley of Death" near the Kikhpinych volcano in Russia forms a predator trap every spring when it fills with poisonous volcanic gases, initially killing birds which then attract larger predators, which also succumb to the gas.
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The Lameta Formation, also known as the Intertrappean Beds is a sedimentary rock formation found in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, India. It is of Maastrichtian age (Late Cretaceous), and is notable for its dinosaur fossils. Many dubious names have been created for isolated bones, but several genera of dinosaurs from these rocks are well-supported, including the titanosaur sauropod Isisaurus and the abelisaurs Indosaurus, Indosuchus, Laevisuchus, and Rajasaurus.Weishampel et al.
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This layer dates back to the latest Maastrichtian, about 1 million years before the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. Couche III represents the most diverse marine ecosystem known from the time. A large variety of marine life is known from the region, including sharks and bony fish, in addition to turtles, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. A few rare, fragmentary dinosaur fossils are known, including an abelisaur and a sauropod.
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This layer dates back to the latest Maastrichtian, about 1 million years before the extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous. Couche III represents the most diverse marine ecosystem known from the time. A large variety of marine life is known from the region, including sharks and bony fish, in addition to turtles, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs. A few rare, fragmentary dinosaur fossils are known, including an abelisaur and a sauropod.
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Dinosaurs include the theropods Megaraptor and Unenlagia (alongside dromaeosaurid and carcharodontosaurid teeth), the sauropod Futalognkosaurus, and indeterminate iguanodontian ornithopods. Additionally, a crocodylomorph similar to Comahuesuchus is also known from Futalognko, as are teeth of the Peirosauridae. Turtles of the group Pelomedusoidea have been found as well. Fish include a small member of the Euteleostei, two members of the Clupeomorpha, and a member of the Semionotidae, known from scales.
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Brohisaurus is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic, based on largely indeterminate fragments of some ribs, vertebrae, and limb bones. The type and only species, B. kirthari, was described by M. Sadiq Malkani in 2003. The genus name means "Brohi lizard" and refers to the Brohi people who live in the area where it was found. The species name refers to the Kirthar Mountains.
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In 2020 Molina-Perez and Larramendi estimated it to be slightly smaller at 45 meters (148 ft) and 60 tonnes (66 short tons). Barosaurus was differently proportioned than its close relative Diplodocus, with a longer neck and shorter tail, but was about the same length overall. It was longer than Apatosaurus, but its skeleton was less robust. Sauropod skulls are rarely preserved, and scientists have yet to discover a Barosaurus skull.
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Barosaurus is a member of the sauropod family Diplodocidae, and sometimes placed with Diplodocus in the subfamily Diplodocinae. Diplodocids are characterized by long tails with over 70 vertebrae, shorter forelimbs than other sauropods, and numerous features of the skull. Diplodocines like Barosaurus and Diplodocus have slenderer builds and longer necks and tails than apatosaurines, the other subfamily of diplodocids. Below is a cladogram of Diplodocinae after Tschopp, Mateus, and Benson (2015).
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Theropod dinosaurs are very diverse in the Nemegt and include the abundant tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus, which might have preyed upon Opisthocoelicaudia. The only other known sauropod is Nemegtosaurus, which is known from a single skull. Ornithischians are represented by the "duck-billed" hadrosaurids (including the very common Saurolophus), the thick-skulled pachycephalosaurs, and the heavily armored ankylosaurs. Neoceratopsians are absent, despite being present in the older Barun Goyot and Djadochta formations.
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A reconstruction of the head Relatively small by sauropod standards, Malawisaurus reached lengths of about , and weighed about . In 2020 it was given a smaller estimation of 11 meters (36 ft) and 2.8 tonnes (3.1 short tons). Like some other titanosaurs, ossicles have been found which are believed to represent dermal scutes that covered the skin. The vertebrae from the middle part of its tail had elongated centra.
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Euhelopus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 129 and 113 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous in what is now Shandong Province in China. It was a large quadrupedal herbivore. Unlike most other sauropods, Euhelopus had longer forelegs than hind legs. This discovery was paleontologically significant because it represented the first dinosaur scientifically investigated from China: seen in 1913, rediscovered in 1922, and excavated in 1923.
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Large animals are more efficient at digestion than small animals, because food spends more time in their digestive systems. This also permits them to subsist on food with lower nutritive value than smaller animals. Sauropod remains are mostly found in rock formations interpreted as dry or seasonally dry, and the ability to eat large quantities of low-nutrient browse would have been advantageous in such environments.Carpenter, K. (2006).
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The titanosaur, named Patagotitan mayorum, would have been around 40m long and weighed around 77 tonnes, larger than any other previously found sauropod. The specimens found were remarkably complete, significantly more so than previous titanosaurs. Research as of 2017 estimated Patagotitan to have been long It has also been suggested that Patagotitan is not necessarily larger than Argentinosaurus and Puertasaurus. More recently, Patagotitan was estimated to have been long and massive.
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2005), and here they named the same taxon Galvesaurus herreroi(a difference of one letter). A Camarasaurus-like taxon is represented only by teeth from the El Castellar Formation. These teeth bear a strong resemblance to the teeth of Camarasaurus than the teeth of any other sauropod. However, their younger age (Hauterivian- Barremian) makes them substantially younger than Camarasaurus, and hence likely to belong to a separate taxon.
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Malarguesaurus (meaning "Malargue lizard" after the Malargüe Department of Mendonza Province) is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mendoza Province, Argentina. Its fossils, consisting of tail vertebrae, chevrons, ribs, and limb bones, were found in the early to middle Coniacian-aged (~89 million years old) Los Bastos Formation of the Neuquén Group. The type species, described by González Riga et al. in 2008, is M. florenciae.
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Brontosaurus is a member of the family Diplodocidae, a clade of gigantic sauropod dinosaurs. The family includes some of the longest and largest creatures ever to walk the earth, including Diplodocus, Supersaurus, and Barosaurus. Brontosaurus is also classified in the subfamily Apatosaurinae, which also includes Apatosaurus and one or more possible unnamed genera. Othniel Charles Marsh described Brontosaurus as being allied to Atlantosaurus, within the now defunct group Atlantosauridae.
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In August 2017, Ada Klinkhamer completed a PhD on sauropod appendicular musculature and biomechanics, with a focus on Diamantinasaurus matildae from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum. To date, she has had two papers from her dissertation published,Klinkhamer, A.J., Mallison, H., Poropat, S.F., Sinapius, G.H.K. & Wroe, S., 2018. Three‐dimensional musculoskeletal modelling of the sauropodomorph hind limb: the effect of postural change on muscle leverage. Anatomical Record 301, 2145–2163.
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Galeamopus is a genus of herbivorous diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs. It contains two known species: Galeamopus hayi, known from the Late Jurassic lower Morrison Formation (Kimmeridgian age, about 155 million years ago) of Wyoming, United States, and Galeamopus pabsti, known from the Late Jurassic fossils from Wyoming and Colorado. The type species is known from one of the most well preserved diplodocid fossils, a nearly complete skeleton with associated skull.
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The faculty of medicine was founded in 1962 as a branch of Cairo University. In 1972, a presidential decree announced the establishment of the university under the name "East Delta University". Its name was changed to Mansoura University in 1973. In 2018, the Mansourasaurus, a genus of herbivorous lithostrotian sauropod dinosaur, had been discovered by a team under Mansoura University paleontologist Hesham Sallam and was named after the university.
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Quarry map of the partial holotype specimen Europatitan (meaning "European giant") is a genus of somphospondylan sauropod from the Early Cretaceous Castrillo de la Reina Formation of Iberia, known from a relatively completely specimen discovered in the early 2000s. It contains a single species, E. eastwoodi, named after actor and director Clint Eastwood. The holotype discovered at "El Oterillo II" in the Castrillo de la Reina Formation (Urbión Group) in 2003.
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Aeolosaurus (; "Aeolus' lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. Like most sauropods, it would have been a quadrupedal herbivore with a long neck and tail. Aeolosaurus is well known for a titanosaur, as it is represented by the remains of several individuals belonging to at least three species. However, like most titanosaurs, no remains of the skull are known.
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The Calcare di Bari (Italian for Bari Limestone) is a Cretaceous (Valanginian to early Turonian, spanning approximately 45 million years) geologic formation in Apulia, southeastern Italy.Calcare di Bari The formation comprises micritic limestones, in places karstified and dolomitized. Rudists and fossil ankylosaur, sauropod and theropod tracks have been reported from the thick formation that was deposited in an inner carbonate platform environment towards the top dominated by rudist reefs.
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Both Triassic amphibians and reptiles left behind footprints near what is now the Fall Creek Post Office. During the Late Jurassic deposition of the sediments now known as the Morrison Formation, both sauropods and theropods left behind footprints. Only two large tracksites of fossil footprints are known from the Morrison Formation and both of them are located in Colorado. A tracksite called Rancho del Rio preserves both sauropod and theropod tracks.
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Legs of Kotasaurus Kotasaurus is one of the most basal sauropods known. The general body plan was that of a typical sauropod, but in several basal (plesiomorphic) features it resembles prosauropods. Like all sauropods, Kotasaurus was an obligate quadruped, while prosauropods were primitively bipedal. The body length is estimated at roughly nine meters, with a weight of 2.5 tonnes, and therefore already comparable with that of later sauropods.
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In 1987, with the assistance of contacts in the Hughenden area, Wade recovered a second skull of the Queensland dinosaur, Muttaburrasaurus. She was able to excavate specimens of Kronoaurus, and secure the site and remains of Jurassic sauropod, Rhoetosaurus, which had been lost since the 1920s. In 1990, Wade excavated the most complete Pliosaurus fossil at Hughenden, presently known. She continued research into mollusc fossils of the Great Artesian Basin.
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This formation is similar in age to the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Germany and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Barosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brachiosaurus. Dinosaurs that lived alongside Dryosaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Stegosaurus and Nanosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus, Ornitholestes and Allosaurus.
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Rukwatita is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Galula Formation in Tanzania. It lived around 100 million years ago, during the middle Cretaceous. The species, which shared features with another southern African species, Malawisaurus dixeyi, measured from the head to the tip of the tail, and had forelimbs that were estimated around long. Fossils were found embedded in a cliff face near Lake Rukwa in the Rukwa Valley.
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Dashanpusaurus (meaning "Dashanpu lizard" after the township it was discovered in) is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the middle of the Jurassic period. The dinosaur was described in 2005 by a group of Chinese paleontologists. The dinosaur's binomial name, Dashanpusaurus dongi, was named after a dinosaur expert of the Dashanpu area, Dong Zhiming. Dashanpusaurus was a herbivore and was quadrupedal, like most others in the Sauropoda.
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Amygdalodon (; "almond tooth" for its almond shaped teeth) was a genus of basal sauropod from the Middle Jurassic of Argentina. The type species is Amygdalodon patagonicus. Fossils of Amygdalodon have been found in the Toarcian Cerro Carnerero Formation of the Jurassic (about 180-172 million years ago). Very little is known about it, but it is one of the few Jurassic dinosaurs from South America found thus far.
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Remains of a sauropod, likely Nemegtosaurus, and a hadrosaurid, likely Jaxartosaurus, have also been found. The formation is located in the Flaming Mountains region of Xinjiang, north of the Turpan Depression. It is not far from Lianmuqin Town of Shanshan County,Glut, 2001 and is presumably named after the village of Subashi (), which is located some to the west of Lianmuqin, in Tuyugou Township (吐峪沟乡).
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From Upchurch 1995:Upchurch 1995. p. 369 In 1998, Sereno and Wilson published a cladistic analysis of the sauropod family which proposed Macronaria as a new taxon containing Camarasaurus, Haplocanthosaurus, and Titanosauriformes. Titanosauriformes was considered to include Brachiosaurus, Saltasaurus, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor. This represented a significant deviation from Upchurch's 1995 phylogeny as well as much of the traditional understanding of neosauropod taxonomy.
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The last member of the Van Ingens family Edwin Joubert Van Ingen (born 27 July 1912) died on 12 Mar 2013 in his Mysore residence. He was 101 years old. A 160 million-year-old fossil of a sauropod, and stuffed animals by Van Ingen & Van Ingen, were part of the museum collection that was destroyed in the April 2016 fire at the National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi.
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Skeleton on display, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Barosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Brachiosaurus. Dinosaurs living alongside Camarasaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Othnielosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus, Ornitholestes,Foster, J. (2007). "Appendix." Jurassic West: The Dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and Their World.
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This formation is similar in age to the Lourinhã Formation in Portugal and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. Ischium of an Apatosaurus showing bite marks from a large theropod Apatosaurus was the second most common sauropod in the Morrison Formation ecosystem, after Camarasaurus. Apatosaurus may have been more solitary than other Morrison Formation dinosaurs. Fossils of the genus have only been found in the upper levels of the formation.
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Shoulder blade and coracoid of A. ajax Apatosaurus is a member of the family Diplodocidae, a clade of gigantic sauropod dinosaurs. The family includes some of the longest creatures ever to walk the earth, including Diplodocus, Supersaurus, and Barosaurus. Apatosaurus is sometimes classified in the subfamily Apatosaurinae, which may also include Suuwassea, Supersaurus, and Brontosaurus. Othniel Charles Marsh described Apatosaurus as allied to Atlantosaurus within the now-defunct group Atlantosauridae.
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Systematic analysis method of Sauropod: a case study of 486 Tonganosaurus hei. Acta Geologica Sinica, 87, 1826-1833. (in Chinese with 487 English abstract) Taking the horizon of the specimen and the age of the Yimen Formation is controversial. Has been assigned three levels to the formation, where Tonganosaurus appears to be of late Early Jurassic ageYuan C M. The division and comparison of "Yimen red beds" from Sichuan[J].
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Khebbashia is a clade of herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs belonging to the Rebbachisauridae. Khebbashians were medium-sized sauropods from the early Cretaceous period of South America, Africa and Europe. The name "Khebbashia" is derived from "Khebbash" or "Khebbache", a Moroccan tribe that inhabited the region where the first rebbachisaurid specimen was found in North Africa. Khebbashia is defined as the least inclusive clade including Limaysaurus tessonei, Nigersaurus taqueti, and Rebbachisaurus garasbae.
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Manus of Diamantinasaurus, the only titanosaur known to have multiple phalanges Sauropod hands already are highly derived from other dinosaurs, being reduced into columnar metacarpals and blocky phalanges with fewer claws. However, titanosaurs evolved the manus even further, completely losing the phalanges and heavily modifying the metacarpals. Argyrosaurus is the only titanosaur known to possess carpals. Other taxa like Epachthosaurus show a reduction of phalanges to one or two bones.
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Titanosaurs are classified as sauropod dinosaurs. They are a highly diverse group form the dominant clade of Cretaceous sauropods. Within Sauropoda, titanosaurs were once classified as close relatives of Diplodocidae due to their shared characteristic of narrow teeth, but this is now known to be the result of convergent evolution. Titanosaurs are now known to be most closely related to euhelopodids and brachiosaurids; together they form a clade named Titanosauriformes.
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Andesaurus ( ; "Andes lizard") is a genus of basal titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur which existed during the middle of the Cretaceous Period in South America. Like most sauropods, it would have had a small head on the end of a long neck and an equally long tail. Andesaurus was a very large animal, as were many others of its relatives, which included the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.
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Agustinia is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Period of South America. It contains the single species Agustinia ligabuei, thought to date from the late Aptian to Albian stages of the Early Cretaceous Period, between 116 and 100.5 million years ago. The name Agustinia honors the discoverer of the specimen, Agustin Martinelli. This dinosaur was originally named in a 1998 abstract written by famous Argentine paleontologist Jose Bonaparte.
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Mortimer, M. (2004), "Re: Largest Dinosaurs", discussion group, The Dinosaur Mailing List, 7 September 2004. Accessed 23 May 2008.Mortimer, M. (2001), "Titanosaurs too large?", discussion group, The Dinosaur Mailing List, 12 September 2001. Accessed 23 May 2008. In a May 2008 article for the weblog Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, paleontologist Matt Wedel used a comparison with Argentinosaurus and calculated the weight of Bruhathkayosaurus at up to .
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Datousaurus, meaning "Big-head Lizard" (from the Chinese da tou "Big Head" and Greek sauros/σαυρος "lizard") was a dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic. It was a sauropod collected from the Lower Shaximiao Formation in Dashanpu, Zigong Sichuan province, China. It shared the local Middle Jurassic landscape with other sauropods such as Shunosaurus, Omeisaurus, Protognathosaurus, the ornithopod Xiaosaurus, the early stegosaur Huayangosaurus as well as the carnivorous Gasosaurus.
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"Ischyrosaurus" is based on a partial humerus (NHMUK R41626) found in 1868. John Hulke described it briefly in 1869, then named it in 1874. The genus is preoccupied by a name Edward Drinker Cope coined in 1869. Like most sauropod remains from the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous of Europe, it became part of the Pelorosaurus-Ornithopsis taxonomic tangle, being referred first to Ornithopsis as O. manseli,Lydekker, R. (1888).
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Most distinctively, it sported two parallel rows of tall spines down its neck and back, taller than in any other known sauropod. In life, these spines most likely could have stuck out of the body as solitary structures that supported a keratinous sheath. An alternate hypothesis, now less favored, postulates that they could have formed a scaffold supporting a skin sail. They might have been used for display, combat, or defense.
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Giraffatitan (name meaning "titanic giraffe") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the late Jurassic Period (Kimmeridgian–Tithonian stages). It was originally named as an African species of Brachiosaurus (B. brancai), but this has since been changed. Giraffatitan was for many decades known as the largest dinosaur but recent discoveries of several larger dinosaurs prove otherwise; giant titanosaurians appear to have surpassed Giraffatitan in terms of sheer mass.
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Huabeisaurus (, meaning "North China lizard") was a genus of dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian to Maastrichtian stages, around 99.7–70.6 million years ago). It was a sauropod which lived in what is present-day northern China. The type species, Huabeisaurus allocotus, was first described by Pang Qiqing and Cheng Zhengwu in 2000. Huabeisaurus is known from numerous remains found in the 1990s, which include teeth, partial limbs and vertebrae.
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Maier (2003), p 10 Soon Sattler joined him with a team of native miners who uncovered two large sauropod skeletons which were transported to Germany.Maier (2003), p 11-12 Ultimately, these would become the holotypes of the genera Tornieria and Janenschia. Fraas had observed that the Tendaguru layers were exceptionally rich in fossils. After his return to Germany he tried to raise enough money for a major expedition.
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Sonorasaurus is a genus of brachiosaurid dinosaur from the Early to Late Cretaceous (Albian to Cenomanian stages, around 112 to 93 million years ago). It was a herbivorous sauropod whose fossils have been found in southern Arizona in the United States. Its name, which means "Sonora lizard", comes from the Sonoran Desert where its fossils were first found. The type species is S. thompsoni, described by Ratkevich in 1998.
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The Venenosaurus type specimen was found in the Early Cretaceous (Aptian-Albian) Poison Strip Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation in Grand County, Utah. The Denver Museum of Natural History opened a small Cedar Mountain Formation quarry in Eastern Utah. This quarry has produced diverse dinosaur fossils including sauropods, theropods, and ornithopods of varying states of growth. Of the sauropod remains from the quarry only one individual was fully grown.
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Paraceratherium may have lived in small herds, perhaps consisting of females and their calves, which they protected from predators. It has been proposed that may be the maximum weight possible for land mammals, and Paraceratherium was close to this limit. The reasons mammals cannot reach the much larger size of sauropod dinosaurs are unknown. The reason may be ecological instead of biomechanical, and perhaps related to reproduction strategies.
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Charles Whitney Gilmore (March 11, 1874 – September 27, 1945) was an American paleontologist who gained renown in the early 20th century for his work on vertebrate fossils during his career at the United States National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural History). Gilmore named many dinosaurs in North America and Mongolia, including the Cretaceous sauropod Alamosaurus, Alectrosaurus, Archaeornithomimus, Bactrosaurus, Brachyceratops, Chirostenotes, Mongolosaurus, Parrosaurus, Pinacosaurus, Styracosaurus ovatus (now Rubeosaurus) and Thescelosaurus.
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Supersaurus (meaning "super lizard") is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. The type species, S. vivianae, was first discovered by Vivian Jones of Delta, Colorado, in the middle Morrison Formation of Colorado in 1972. The fossil remains came from the Brushy Basin Member of the formation, dating to about 153 million years ago.Turner, C.E. and Peterson, F., (1999).
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The results of the favoured analysis of Sander et al. (2006) are shown below on the left: Back-vertebra in front view During a description of the vertebrae of Europasaurus by Carballido & Sander (2013), another phylogenetic analysis was conducted (right column above). The cladistic matrix was expanded to include more sauropod taxa, such as Bellusaurus, Cedarosaurus and Tapuiasaurus. The taxon Brachiosaurus was also separated into true Brachiosaurus (B.
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The author also commented on the diagnosis of Astrodon johnstoni proposed by Carpenter and Tidwell (which was based on all of the sauropod material from the Arundel Formation, not only on the teeth from the type series); he claimed that most of the supposed autapomorphies of this taxon "are indistinguishable compared to other sauropods such as Camarasaurus (...) and/or are related to the juvenile nature of the material".
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In 1911, German geologist Wilhelm Bornhardt at Nambango in German East Africa discovered two sauropod vertebrae, fifteen kilometers (nine miles) southeast of Tendaguru Hill. These were described by Werner Janensch in 1929 but not named.Janensch, W., 1929, "Material und Formengehalt der Sauropoden in der Ausbeute der Tendaguru-Expedition", Palaeontographica (Suppl. 7) 2: 1-34 The finds were formally named by José Fernando Bonaparte, Wolf-Dieter Heinrich and Rupert Wild in 2000.
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"Microdontosaurus" (meaning "tiny-toothed lizard") is the name given to an as yet undescribed genus of sauropod dinosaur from China. It was named from fossils from the Middle Jurassic-age Dapuka Group of Xinjiang. The intended type species is "M. dayensis." As with other informal names created by Zhao in 1985 or 1983, it has not been used since then, and may have been redescribed under another name.
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A close-up of the head of "Nurosaurus qaganensis". "Nurosaurus" (Nur-o-saw-rus, meaning "Nur lizard") is the informal name for a genus of sauropod dinosaur. It is known from a partial, large skeleton, that was presented as soon-to-be-described by Zhiming Dong in 1992, where he gave the proposed binomial "Nurosaurus qaganensis". It was discovered in the Qagannur Formation of Inner Mongolia, southeast of Erenhot.
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"Sulaimanisaurus" (meaning "Sulaiman lizard", for the Sulaiman foldbelt) is an informal taxon of titanosaurian sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Balochistan, western Pakistan (also spelled "Sulaimansaurus" in some early reports). The proposed species is "S. gingerichi", described by M. Sadiq Malkani in 2006, and it is based on seven tail vertebra, found in the Maastrichtian-age Vitakri Member of the Pab Formation. Four additional tail vertebrae have been assigned to it.
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Life restoration of Lingwulong shenqi In 2004, sheep herder Ma Yun found dinosaur bones, notifying local administrators Yang Huozhu and Liu Hongan. In the spring of 2005 these showed the fossils to dinosaur expert Xu Xing who sent out a team to investigate the find. From 2005 onwards several quarries ware excavated at Ciyaopu, near Lingwu, in Ningxia Hui. The remains were discovered of about seven to ten sauropod skeletons.
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It lived alongside other reptiles from the upper part, most notably the large dromaeosaurid Achillobator, the tyrannosauroid Alectrosaurus, therizinosaurs Erlikosaurus and Segnosaurus, the pachycephalosaur Amtocephale; ankylosaurs Talarurus and Tsagantegia, the large sauropod Erketu and the basal hadrosauroid Gobihadros. Additional paleofauna has been recovered, expanding the aquatic biodiversity: Paralligator, Lindholmemys and the shark Hybodus. The discoveries of azhdarchids pterosaurs have been reported from at least two locations, compromising mainly cervical vertebrae.
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The depositional environment at the time was when the Ordos Basin formed a large inland lake, surrounded by floodplains. The dark shales have been explored for the potential of producing shale gas. The coal has also been explored for the production of coalbed methane. The formation is also notable for its fossil content, with dinosaur footprints and the remains of the sauropod Lingwulong having been found in the formation.
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They also found it most parsimonious to assign the skull to B. altithorax itself rather than an unspecified species, as there is no evidence of other brachiosaurid taxa in the Morrison Formation (and adding this and other possible elements to a phylogenetic analysis did not change the position of B. altithorax). Scapulocoracoid BYU 9462 has been seen as a possible Brachiosaurus bone; it was originally assigned to Ultrasauros (now a junior synonym of Supersaurus), Museum of Ancient Life A shoulder blade with coracoid from Dry Mesa Quarry, Colorado, is one of the specimens at the center of the Supersaurus/Ultrasauros issue of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, James A. Jensen described disarticulated sauropod remains from the quarry as belonging to several exceptionally large taxa, including the new genera Supersaurus and Ultrasaurus, the latter renamed Ultrasauros shortly thereafter because another sauropod had already received the name. Later study showed that the "ultrasaur" material mostly belonged to Supersaurus, though the shoulder blade did not.
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Lectotype of Titanosaurus indicus, the name-bearing genus of Titanosauria Titanosaurus indicus was first named by British paleontologist Richard Lydekker in 1877, as a new taxon of dinosaur based on two caudals and a femur collected on different occasions at the same location in India. While it was later given a position as a sauropod within Cetiosauridae by Lydekker in 1888, he named the new sauropod family Titanosauridae for the genus in 1893, which included only Titanosaurus and Argyrosaurus, united by caudals, presacrals, a lack of pleurocoels and open chevrons. Following this, Austro-Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa reviewed reptile genera in 1928, and provided a short classification of Sauropoda, where he placed the Titanosaurinae (a reranking of Lydekker's Titanosauridae) in Morosauridae, and included the genera Titanosaurus, Hypselosaurus and Macrurosaurus because they all had strongly procoelous caudals. German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene provided a significant revision of Titanosauridae the following year in 1929, where he reviewed the dinosaurs of Cretaceous Argentina, and named multiple new genera.
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Other dig sites include "Foot Site" or FS, which contains parts of at least three juvenile diplodocid with articulated hands and feet, "There You Are" or TYA, which contains the remains of multiple Allosaurs and has not been worked on over the past few years due to the discovery of a site called "Above There You Are" or ATYA, which contains the remains of what currently appears to be a single very young Diplodocid. One of the oldest sites on the property is called "Beside Sauropod" or BS, which has been active for over 20 years and produced over 1800 bones to date. Included at the site are at least 6 Camarasaurs and a partial Apatosaur as well as dozens of shed Allosaur teeth. There are many more inactive sites found around the property including "Don't Fall," "Bone Bed," "Above Bone Bed," "West to Beside Sauropod," "Laura's Apatosaur," and "Cheryl's Blind" just to name a few.
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Life restoration of Australovenator feeding on carcass of Diamantinasaurus AODL 604 was found about northwest of Winton, near Elderslie Station. It was recovered from the lower part of the Winton Formation, dated to the late Cenomanian. AODL 604 was found in a clay layer between sandstone layers, interpreted as an oxbow lake, or billabong, deposit. Also found at the site were the type specimen of the sauropod Diamantinasaurus, bivalves, fish, turtles, crocodilians, and plant fossils.
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Life restoration Fossils that are now known under the name Wintonotitan were first found in 1974 by Keith Watts. At the time, the specimens were assigned to an Austrosaurus sp., Austrosaurus then being the only named Australian Cretaceous sauropod genus. These fossils, catalogued as QMF 7292, consisted of a left shoulder blade, much of the forelimbs, a number of back, hip, and tail vertebrae, part of the right hip, ribs, chevrons, and unidentifiable fragments.
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QMF 7292 was established as the type specimen of Wintonotitan in 2009 by Scott Hocknull and colleagues. Hocknull suggested that Austrosaurus mckillopi differed only slightly from the QMF 7292, the holotype of Wintonotitan wattsii, and should be considered a nomen dubium. The type species is W. wattsi, honoring the original discoverer. A phylogenetic analysis found Wintonotitan to be a basal titanosauriform sauropod, in a comparable part of the titanosauriform tree to Phuwiangosaurus.
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This locality is in the upper midsection of the Winton Formation, which dates to the Cenomanian of the Late Cretaceous. The discovery of Diamantinasaurus ended a pause in the discovery of new dinosaurs in Australia, as the first sauropod named in over 75 years. Along with Australovenator, Diamantinasaurus has been nicknamed after the Australian song "Waltzing Matilda", with Australovenator being called "Banjo" and Diamantinasaurus being nicknamed "Matilda". Wintonotitan, also from the site, was dubbed "Clancy".
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Today only the sand infill remains, with the encasing mudstone having been eroded away. The best-preserved footprint measures across, so it was probably created by an individual larger than the type specimen. Although the surface of the underside is hard to obtain, the vertical surfaces are very well preserved, making this track one of the best preserved sauropod tracks known. Four digital impressions can be distinguished, with two or three showing claw impressions.
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Nemegtosaurus (meaning 'Reptile from the Nemegt') was a sauropod dinosaur from Late Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. Nemegtosaurus was named after the Nemegt Basin in the Gobi Desert, where the remains — a single skull — were found. The skull resembles diplodocoids in being long and low, with pencil- shaped teeth. However, recent work has shown that Nemegtosaurus is in fact a titanosaur, closely related to animals such as Saltasaurus, Alamosaurus and Rapetosaurus.
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The Paralititan type specimen shows evidence of having been scavenged by a carnivorous dinosaur as it was disarticulated within an oval of eight metres length with the various bones being clustered. A Carcharodontosaurus tooth was discovered in between the clusters. The holotype is part of the collection of the Cairo Geological Museum. The large anterior dorsal vertebra 1912V11164, in 1932 by Stromer referred to an undetermined "Giant Sauropod", was in 2001 tentatively referred to Paralititan.
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The autochthonous, scavenged skeleton was preserved in tidal flat deposits containing in the form of fossil leaves and root systems, a mangrove vegetation of seed ferns, Weichselia reticulata. The mangrove ecosystem it inhabited was situated along the southern shore of the Tethys Sea. Paralititan is the first dinosaur demonstrated to have inhabited a mangrove habitat. It lived at approximately the same time and place as giant predators Carcharodontosaurus, Spinosaurus, and the sauropod Aegyptosaurus.
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Size comparison This dinosaur is believed to have possessed armor-like osteoderms. A relatively small sauropod, with a femur only long. It is one of the most completely known of Patagonian sauropods. In addition to the original fossils described by Lydekker in 1893, it is represented by fossils collected in the early twentieth century, and more recent material, including a well preserved and partially articulated specimen described in 2005 (with two associated osteoderms).
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The sacrum (fused vertebrae that form the core of the hip), consisting of four vertebrae, is nearly complete, but no bones of the tail was recovered. Cervical vertebrae Sacrum in dorsal, ventral, and lateral view The overall shape of the neck vertebrae is typical for basal sauropodomorphs, but Pol et al. interpret the remains of the neural arches to indicate a more sauropod-like shape. Some characters, however, show an intermediate development.
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Paul Upchurch is a Reader in Palaeobiology at University College London and Philip Mannion is a Junior Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Both Upchurch and Mannion have visited the AAOD Collection and have formed a collaborative affiliation with Poropat and Hocknull. The aim of this project is a thorough revision of the Australian Cretaceous sauropod fauna, with a view to establishing the relationships of Australia's sauropods to those throughout the world.
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Padillasaurus is an extinct genus of titanosauriform sauropod known from the Early Cretaceous (Barremian stage) Paja Formation in Colombia. It contains a single species, Padillasaurus leivaensis, known only from a single partial axial skeleton. Initially described as a brachiosaurid, it was considered to be the first South American brachiosaurid ever discovered and named. Before its discovery, the only known brachiosaurid material on the continent was very fragmentary and from the Jurassic period.
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Uberabatitan (meaning "Uberaba titan", in reference to where it was found) is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. It is known from bones including neck, back, and tail vertebrae, pelvic bones, and limb bones. These fossils were found in the uppermost portion of the Maastrichtian-age Marília Formation of the Bauru Group, in Uberaba, Minas Gerais. The type species, described by Salgado and Carvalho in 2008, is U. ribeiroi.
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Rocasaurus (meaning "Roca lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod that lived in South America. Rocasaurus was discovered in Argentina in 2000, within the Allen Formation which is dated to be middle Campanian to early Maastrichtian in age (75 to 70 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous). This genus grew up to long, making it one of the smaller sauropods. It seems to be closely related to saltasaurid dinosaurs, like Saltasaurus and Neuquensaurus.
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In 2015, it was renamed as the separate genus Galeamopus, and several other Diplodocus specimens were referred to that genus, leaving no definite Diplodocus skulls known. The two Morrison Formation sauropod genera Diplodocus and Barosaurus had very similar limb bones. In the past, many isolated limb bones were automatically attributed to Diplodocus, but may, in fact, have belonged to Barosaurus. Fossil remains of Diplodocus have been recovered from stratigraphic zone 5 of the Morrison Formation.
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Although originally thought to belong to a diplodocid, it was later reinterpreted as a brachiosaurid, probably belonging to B. altithorax. In 2018, the largest sauropod foot ever found was reported from the Black Hills of Weston County, Wyoming. The femur is not preserved but comparisons suggest that it was about 2% longer than that of the B. altithorax holotype. Though possibly belonging to Brachiosaurus, the authors cautiously classified it as an indeterminate brachiosaurid.
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On 14 August, The New York Times brought the story. At the time sauropod dinosaurs appealed to the public because of their great size, often exaggerated by sensationalist newspapers. Riggs in his publications played into this by emphasizing the enormous magnitude of Brachiosaurus. Brachiosaurus has been called one of the most iconic dinosaurs, but most popular depictions are based on the African species B. brancai which has since been moved to its own genus, Giraffatitan.
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After the Felch brothers ended their field work, the so-called Marsh-Felch quarry lay unworked for twelve years. However, in 1900 William Utterback began fieldwork in the area under John Bell Hatcher for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. In the two ensuing years of field work Utterback found many skeletons of previously known dinosaurs, but also the new genus Haplocanthosaurus. This was the smallest known sauropod species of the Morrison Formation.
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In 1979, two hikers discovered a series of gigantic articulated vertebrae fossils near San Ysidro. They reported the remains to David Gilette of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Gillette led an expedition into the region and used cutting edge technology to locate the remains while they were still entombed in sandstone. The team excavated a massive quarry and gradually recovered a significant portion of the rear half of a diplodocid sauropod dinosaur.
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During the early 80s, another partial sauropod skeleton was discovered near San Ysidro. The remains were thought to belong to the species Camarasaurus supremus. Prior to these discoveries most dinosaur fossils discovered in New Mexico were scrappy remains uncovered serenipitously by mining operations and surveys for uranium. More recently, in the 2000s, Seismosaurus was found to be the same as Diplodocus, a previously known dinosaur of similar age from the western United States.
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Camarasaurus supremus. Around March 1877 a man named Oramel Lucas discovered sauropod bones in a valley called Garden Park located a few miles north of Canon City. He wrote to Edward Drinker Cope and O. C. Marsh, the famous rival paleontologists of the bone wars to alert them about his discovery. Although Marsh never responded, Cope did, and Oramel Lucas and his brother Ira began digging up local fossils and sending them to Cope.
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Narambuenatitan is a genus of lithostrotian titanosaur sauropod from late Cretaceous (lower-middle Campanian stage) deposits of northern Patagonia of Argentina. Narambuenatitan is known from the holotype MAU-Pv-N-425, an incomplete skeleton. It was collected in 2005 and 2006 from the Anacleto Formation (Neuquén Group) in northern Patagonia. It was first named by Leonardo S. Filippi, Rodolfo A. García and Alberto C. Garrido in 2011 and the type species Narambuenatitan palomoi.
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Amazonsaurus ( , "Amazon lizard") is a genus of diplodocoid sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. It would have been a large-bodied quadrupedal herbivore with a long neck and whiplash tail. Although more derived diplodocoids were some of the longest animals ever to exist, Amazonsaurus was probably not more than 12 meters (40 ft) long. Gregory S. Paul estimated in 2010 its weight at 5000 kg.
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The title character, Moschops, is a young therapsid of the genus Moschops; Ally is a theropod of the genus Allosaurus; Grandfather Diplodocus is a sauropod of the genus Diplodocus; Mrs. Kerry is a ceratopsid of the genus Triceratops; Uncle Rex is a Tyrannosaurus rex; and Mr. Ichthyosaurus is an ichthyosaur of the genus Ichthyosaurus. In the series, Moschops and Ally are friends. They live in a cave with Grandfather Diplodocus and Uncle Rex.
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In June 1968, the Rutland Dinosaur, a specimen of the sauropod dinosaur Cetiosaurus oxoniensis was found in the Williamson Cliffe quarry in the parish. It was calculated to be around 170 million years old, from the Aalenian or Bajocian part of the Jurassic period. It is one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons found in the UK, being fifteen metres long. Since 1975 the remains have been in Leicester Museum & Art Gallery.
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Later, other sauropod bones were also found, which eventually led to the landmark's name. The animals were from the late Jurassic Age (150 million years ago) and within the Morrison Formation. Fossils of the Fruitadens (a heterodontosaurid dinosaur), the world's smallest known plant-eating dinosaur, were first found in the Fruita Paleontological Area (within the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area) off Kings View Road in the 1970s and 1980s. The name means "Fruita tooth".
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Museo Municipal Carmen Funes, or, the Carmen Funes Municipal Museum, is a museum of paleontology in Plaza Huincul, Neuquén Province, Argentina. It is best known for its collection of dinosaur fossils, including the only specimen of the largest recorded dinosaur remains, Argentinosaurus huinculensis, and the only known sauropod embryos, which were discovered at a huge nesting site in Auca Mahuida, Patagonia. Its standard abbreviation is MCF-PVPH, or just PVPH to denote the paleontological collection.
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Fossils of C. oxoniensis at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History In March 1868, workers near Bletchingdon discovered a sauropod right femur. Between March 1869 and June 1870 Professor John Phillips, further investigating the site, in a layer dating from the Bathonian uncovered three skeletons and additional bone material. In 1871 based on these he named two species: Cetiosaurus oxoniensis (originally spelled Ceteosaurus Oxoniensis) and Cetiosaurus glymptonensis. "Oxoniensis" refers to Oxford, "glymptonensis" to Glympton.
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Bengo is known by the abundant fishes, with a few fishing communities along the coast. Late Cretaceous fossils are known from this region, including unique turtles (Angolachelys) and the first dinosaur fossil skeleton from Angola: the Angolatitan.O Mateus, LL Jacobs, AS Schulp, MJ Polcyn, TS Tavares, A Buta Neto, 2011. Angolatitan adamastor, a new sauropod dinosaur and the first record from Angola. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências 83 (1), 221-233.
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Marsh's finds formed the original core of the collection of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History. The museum's Great Hall is dominated by the first fossil skeleton of Brontosaurus that he discovered, which was reclassified as Apatosaurus for a time. However, an extensive study published in 2015 concluded that Brontosaurus was a valid genus of sauropod distinct from Apatosaurus. He donated his home in New Haven, Connecticut, to Yale University in 1899.
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Nopcsaspondylus (meaning "Nopcsa's vertebra", in reference to the original describer) is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur (a type of large, long-necked quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaur) from the Cenomanian-age (Upper Cretaceous) Candeleros Formation of Neuquén, Argentina. It is based on a now- lost back vertebra described by Nopcsa in 1902 but not named at the time. The specimen had a small vertebral body and large hollows, now known to be typical of rebbachisaurids.
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Hudiesaurus (meaning "butterfly lizard") is a herbivorous sauropod genus of dinosaur from China. The fossil remains of Hudiesaurus were in 1993 found by a Chinese-Japanese expedition near Qiketai in Shanshan, Xinjiang province. The type (and only named) species, Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum, was named and described by Dong Zhiming in 1997. The generic name is derived from Mandarin hudie, "butterfly" and refers to a flat butterfly-shaped process on the front base of the vertebral spine.
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Dinheirosaurus is a genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaur that is known from fossils uncovered in modern-day Portugal. It may represent a species of Supersaurus. The only species is Dinheirosaurus lourinhanensis, first described by José Bonaparte and Octávio Mateus in 1999 for vertebrae and some other material from the Lourinhã Formation. Although the precise age of the formation is not known, it can be dated around the early Tithonian of the Late Jurassic.
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Antetonitrus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur found in the Early Jurassic Elliot Formation of South Africa. The only species is Antetonitrus ingenipes. As one of the oldest known sauropods, it is crucial for the understanding of the origin and early evolution of this group. It was a quadrupedal herbivore, like all of its later relatives, but shows primitive adaptations to use the forelimbs for grasping, instead of purely for weight support.
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Much larger terrestrial vertebrates might be possible but would require different body shapes and possibly behavioural change to prevent joint collapse. The authors of the study cautioned the model is not fully realistic and too simplistic, and that it could be improved in many areas. For further studies, more data from living animals is needed to improve the soft tissue reconstruction, and the model needs to be confirmed based on more complete sauropod specimens.
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Chinese sauropod taxonomy became increasingly convoluted in the 1980s. In 1983, Dong, Zhou, and Zhang named a species Omeisaurus fuxiensis, which they based on different material than Zigongosaurus fuxiensis, but then suggested that the two were the same animal. Following this, the genus was thought to belong to Omeisaurus, possibly as a synonym of O. junghsiensis. In the mid-1990s, opinion shifted, and the genus was instead assigned, by Zhang and Chen, to Mamenchisaurus.
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Rhoetosaurus (meaning "Rhoetos lizard"), named after Rhoetus, a titan in Greek Mythology, is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic (Oxfordian) Walloon Coal Measures of what is now eastern Australia. Rhoetosaurus is estimated to have been about long, weighing about .Paul, G.S., 2010, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, Princeton University Press p. 173 Subsequent authors have sometimes misspelled the name: Rhaetosaurus (de Lapparent & Laverat, 1955); Rheteosaurus (Yadagiri, Prasad & Satsangi, 1979).
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Jeffrey A. Wilson also known as "JAW" is a professor of geological sciences and assistant curator at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan. His doctoral dissertation was on sauropod evolution and phylogeny, and he has continued this work in cladistic analysis and revision of the group (see e.g. Wilson and Sereno 1994, 1998, Wilson 2005b, and especially Wilson 2002). With Paul Sereno, he defined the clades Macronaria and Somphospondyli (Wilson & Sereno 1998).
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Other dinosaurs from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight include the theropods Neovenator, Aristosuchus, Thecocoelurus, Calamospondylus, and Ornithodesmus; the ornithopods Iguanodon, Hypsilophodon, and Valdosaurus; the sauropods Ornithopsis, Eucamerotus, and Chondrosteosaurus; and the ankylosaur Polacanthus. The Papo Seco Formation of Portugal where Baryonyx has possibly been identified is composed of marl, representing a lagoon environment. Other dinosaur remains from the area include fragments tentatively assigned to Mantellisaurus, a macronarian sauropod, and Megalosaurus.
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Chondrosteosaurus (meaning "cartilage and bone lizard") was a sauropod from Early Cretaceous England. The type species, Chondrosteosaurus gigas, was described and named by Richard Owen in 1876. The fossils of Chondrosteosaurus were discovered in the Wessex Formation on the Isle of Wight. C. gigas is known only from two neck vertebrae (specimens BMNH 46869, the holotype, and BMNH 46870), with distinctive hollows and internal passages now interpreted as evidence of pneumatic air sacs.
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Cedarosaurus (meaning "Cedar lizard" - named after the Cedar Mountain Formation, in which it was discovered) was a nasal-crested macronarian dinosaur genus from the Early Cretaceous Period (Valanginian). It was a sauropod which lived in what is now Utah. It was first described by Tidwell, Carpenter and Brooks in 1999. It shows similarities to the brachiosaurid Eucamerotus from the Wessex Formation of southern England, as well as to Brachiosaurus from the Morrison Formation.
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Eusauropoda (meaning "true sauropods") is a derived clade of sauropod dinosaurs. Eusauropods represent the node-based group that includes all descendant sauropods starting with the basal eusauropods of Shunosaurus, and possibly Barapasaurus, and Amygdalodon, but excluding Vulcanodon and Rhoetosaurus. The Eusauropoda was coined in 1995 by Paul Upchurch to create a monophyletic new taxonomic group that would include all sauropods, except for the vulcanodontids. Eusauropoda are herbivorous, quadrupedal, and have long necks.
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The Yellow Cat Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation is known for its dinosaurs, including the small coelurosaurian theropod Nedcolbertia, the dromaeosaurid Utahraptor, brachiosaurid sauropod Cedarosaurus, and heavily armored ankylosaurid Gastonia. Whether a basal hadrosaurid or derived non- hadrosaurid iguanodontian, Cedrorestes would have been a large herbivore capable of moving both bipedally or on all fours.Horner, John R.; Weishampel, David B.; and Forster, Catherine A. (2004). "Hadrosauridae". The Dinosauria, 2nd edition. 438–463.
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However, recent study indicates that Euskelosaurus is based on undiagnostic material and thus a nomen dubium; in his series of sauropodomorph and basal sauropod papers, Adam Yates has recommended no longer using Euskelosaurus and has suggested the use of Plateosauravus instead.Yates, A.M. (2003). A new species of the primitive dinosaur Thecodontosaurus (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha) and its implications for the systematics of early dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 1(1):1-42Yates, A.M., and Kitching, J.W. (2003).
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Isanosaurus, being one of the first sauropods known, already shows a quadrupedal locomotion (with all four legs on the ground). The legs were column-like, as indicated by the robust and straight thigh bone. In prosauropods, but also in the very basal sauropod Antetonitrus, the thigh bone was slightly sigmoidal (S-curved). Also, like in other sauropods, bony processes of the femur were reduced in Isanosaurus; most notably, the lesser trochanter was lacking.
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Satellite image of the Chorrillo Formation site (in the middle on the right), the geological unit from where Nullotitan remains have been discovered. In the bottom left seen the Perito Moreno Glacier. In 1980, geologist Francisco E. Nullo noticed the presence of sauropod bones on a hillside of the Estancia Alta Vista, south of the Centinela River in the Santa Cruz province of Argentina. He reported these finds to then-prominent paleontologist José Bonaparte.
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The museum closed in November 2009 for a major refurbishment and reopened on Yorkshire Day on 1 August 2010. The facial reconstruction of King Richard III was displayed in the museum from July–October 2013 as part of a national tour. A Shakespearean First Folio was on display in the Medieval gallery in 2014. In 2015 the museum first displayed the oldest Sauropod fossil from the Yorkshire coast, nicknamed 'Alan the Dinosaur'.
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Wyoming dig The museum has conducted fossil digs in many Western states. The Late Cretaceous Niobrara Formation in Kansas has yielded many marine fossils. The Hell Creek Formation in Montana and South Dakota has produced duck-billed, horned, and tyrannosaurid dinosaurs, as well as some noteworthy fish. There is an ongoing summer dig in the Jurassic Morrison Formation in Wyoming, which has produced sauropod and theropod dinosaurs, as well as other remarkable vertebrates.
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This is longer than the longest Sauroposeidon cervical rib, which measures ."Osteology, paleobiology, and relationships of the sauropod dinosaur Sauroposeidon", by Mathew J. Wedel, Richard L. Cifelli, and R. Kent Sanders (Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 45, pages 343-388, 2000). Additional remains attributed to this species, but not yet formally described, belong to one of the largest dinosaurs known—the restored skeleton measuring in length. It is named in reference to the China-Canada Dinosaur Project.
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Sinovenatorines also paralleled dromaeosaurids in the minute but taxonomically informative anatomical differences between different members of the group. However, it is possible that some of these differences may arise from individual or ontogenetic variation. A wide variety of dinosaurs lived in the Lujiatun Beds alongside the sinovenatorines. These included the microraptorine Graciliraptor lujiatunensis; the oviraptorosaur Incisivosaurus gauthieri; the ornithomimosaurs Shenzhousaurus orientalis and Hexing qingyi; the proceratosaurid tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus; the titanosauriform sauropod Euhelopus sp.
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He assigned these specimens to the new genus Pelorosaurus, and grouped it together with the dinosaurs. However, Mantell still did not recognize the relationship to Cetiosaurus. The next sauropod find to be described and misidentified as something other than a dinosaur were a set of hip vertebrae described by Harry Seeley in 1870. Seeley found that the vertebrae were very lightly constructed for their size and contained openings for air sacs (pneumatization).
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Cathartesaura is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur hailing from the Late Cretaceous strata of the Huincul Formation, at the "La Buitrera" locality, in the Neuquén Basin of Río Negro Province, Argentina. The fossil remains, described by Gallina and Apesteguía in 2005, consist of a partial skeleton including vertebrae and limb bones. These were found at the base of the formation, which spans the Cenomanian and Coniacian epochs, in mudstone and sandstone levels.
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The remains were not found in articulation but in such close association that it is likely they represent a single individual. The describing authors of Paludititan considered the possibility that the skeleton was a specimen of Magyarosaurus dacus, a coeval titanosaurian sauropod sharing the same habitat. Overlapping remains were identical. On the other hand, they did not show any shared unique traits, synapomorphies, and M. dacus is known from a different location.
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Life restoration Melanorosaurus was once classified as a prosauropod, but Prosauropoda no longer appears to be a natural group. According to some definitions of Sauropoda, Melanorosaurus is an early sauropod. However, these definitions also take in many other former "prosauropods", and Adam Yates has proposed a definition of Sauropoda that will specifically exclude Melanorosaurus (Sauropoda as all sauropodomorphs closer to Saltasaurus than Melanorosaurus). This definition would allow Sauropoda to retain its traditional concept.
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Suuwassea (meaning "ancient thunder") is a genus of dicraeosaurid sauropod dinosaur found in the Upper Jurassic strata of the Morrison Formation, located in southern Carbon County, Montana, United States. The fossil remains were recovered in a series of expeditions during a period spanning the years 1999 and 2000 and were described by J.D. Harris and Peter Dodson in 2004. They consist of a disarticulated but associated partial skeleton, including partial vertebral series and limb bones.
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"On a new titanosaur sauropod from the Bauru Group, Late Cretaceous of Brazil. " Boletim do Museu Nacional (Geologia), 74: 1-31. The type specimen of Maxakalisaurus belonged to an animal about long, with an estimated weight of 9 tons, although, according to paleontologist Alexander Kellner, it could have reached a length of approximately . It had a long neck and tail, ridged teeth (unusual among sauropods) and lived about 80 million years ago.
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A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign seeking did not manage to get funded halfway and Sauropod failed to find a publisher to finance the game. Instead, the Canadian Media Fund invested . As Mirador drew closer to release, it came to the studio's employees that the money the studio had would not suffice to keep it running until the end of 2019. The game was eventually released on 26 July 2019 without prior early access availability.
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Ten caudal vertebrae, a haemal arch, two ischia and a femur, as well as bone fragments were collected in the site. Excavations were carried out during the years 2002–2004, covering a surface area of some . Approximately 810 skeletal elements and bone fragments were recovered, and most of them belong to a single specimen of rebbachisaurid sauropod. The remains were found disarticulated in the same bed and in close proximity to each other.
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First caudal vertebra and other fossils Joshua Smith in 1999 in the Bahariya Oasis rediscovered the Gebel el Dist site where Richard Markgraf in 1912, 1913 and 1914 had excavated fossils for Ernst Stromer. In 2000, an American expedition was mounted to revisit the site. However, apparently Markgraf had already removed all more complete skeletons, leaving only limited remains behind. At a new site, the nearby Gebel Fagga, the expedition succeeded in locating a partial sauropod skeleton.
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The town lies on the edge of what is called the Eromanga Inland Sea, which existed in the Early Cretaceous. The Eromanga region has abundant oil wells and opal mines. There are also agricultural industries such as cattle and sheep as many pioneering property owners came and took up land in the 1860s. Dinosaur fossils, including Australia's largest dinosaur a titanosaur species of sauropod, have also been found here making it an area of interest for palaeontologists.
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Baurutitan is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous in what is now Brazil. The type species, Baurutitan britoi, was described in 2005 by Kellner and colleagues, although the fossil remains had already been discovered in 1957. Baurutitan is classified as a lithostrotian titanosaur, and is distinguished from related genera based on its distinctive caudal vertebrae. This South American dinosaur was found in the Marília Formation near Uberaba, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.
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Additional remains are known from even younger rocks, but they have not been identified as any particular species. Older Brontosaurus remains have also been identified from the middle Kimmeridgian, and are assigned to B. parvus. Fossils of these animals have been found in Nine Mile Quarry and Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming and at sites in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Utah, present in stratigraphic zones 2–6. The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs.
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Rapetosaurus restoration Rapetosaurus was a fairly typical sauropod, with a short and slender tail, a very long neck and a huge, elephant-like body. Its head resembles the head of a diplodocid, with a long, narrow snout and nostrils on the top of its skull. It was a herbivore and its small, pencil-like teeth were good for ripping the leaves off trees but not for chewing. It was fairly modest in size, for a titanosaur.
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Laurasiformes (meaning "Laurasian forms") is an extinct clade of sauropod dinosaurs from the late Early Cretaceous of Europe, North and South America. It was defined in 2009 by the Spanish paleontologist Rafael Royo-Torres as a clade containing sauropods more closely related to Tastavinsaurus than to Saltasaurus. Genera purported to form part of this clade include Aragosaurus, Galvesaurus, Phuwiangosaurus, Venenosaurus, Cedarosaurus, Tehuelchesaurus, Sonorasaurus and Tastavinsaurus. Its exact position and validity is uncertain and varies between authors.
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Based on the sea urchins Nucleolites amplus and Acrosalenia colcanapi as index fossils, the Sakaraha Formation has been correlated to the Bathonian stage (167.7–164.7 million years ago) of the Middle Jurassic epoch. Middle Jurassic deposits in the Mahajanga Basin have produced an unusual but poorly-known assemblage of animals. In 2005, the other skull fragment found in the same locality as Razanandrongobe was named as the sauropod dinosaur Archaeodontosaurus. Teeth of pterosaurs were also found at the locality.
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Skeletal reconstruction of Xenoposeidon as a rebbachisaurid Like other sauropods, Xenoposeidon would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore. It was relatively small for a sauropod. Extrapolating from the vertebra suggests that the type individual of Xenoposeidon could have been about 15 metres (50 ft) long and weighed approximately 7.6 tonnes (8.4 short tons), if it resembled Brachiosaurus, to 20 m (65 ft) long and 2.8 tonnes (3.1 short tons), if it was built like the longer, lighter Diplodocus.
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It has been proposed that sauropods possessed a four-chambered double pump heart, with one pump for oxygenated and one pump for deoxygenated blood. As in all Macronaria, the forelimbs of brachiosaurids are long relative to the hindlimbs, but this trait is more pronounced in brachiosaurids. The forelimbs were very slender for a sauropod and the metacarpal bones of the forelimb were elongated. These adaptations overall increased the stride length of the forelimbs, arguably resulting in an uneven gait.
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It was named by Soviet paleontologist Anatoly Riabinin in 1938, and was the first sauropod species from Kazakhstan. It was reported from a certain locality in the Kyzylkum Desert, but the exact location is unknown. It may have come from the Syuksyuk Formation (originally described as Dabrazinskaya Svita) which dates to the Santonian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Other researchers have considered it as either, Titanosauridae incertae sedis, as a nomen dubium, or as a nomen nudem.
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No other fossil vertebrates were found with the remains of Afromimus at the Gadoufaoua locality. However, other dinosaurs are known from Gaoufaoua: the theropods Suchomimus/Cristatusaurus, Kryptops, and Eocarcharia; the sauropod Nigersaurus; and the ornithopods Ouranosaurus, Lurdusaurus, and Elrhazosaurus. Other fauna include crocodilians, such as Sarcosuchus, Stolokrosuchus, Araripesuchus, and Anatosuchus; turtles of the genera Teneremys, Platycheloides, Taquetochelys, and Araripemys; and fish, including the coelacanth Mawsonia, the lungfish Ceratodus, and the ray-finned fish Lepidotes and Pliodetes.
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Previously, it was thought that broader jaws evolved prior to the reduction and loss in fleshy cheeks as an adaptation toward bulk-browsing in sauropods. The sauropod Chinshakiangosaurus possessed jaws that were U-shaped, while still retaining fleshy cheeks, the opposite of the condition seen in Aardonyx. Because Chinshakiangosaurus is a more derived sauropodomorph, this suggests that a wide, cheekless gape may have evolved twice in Sauropodomorpha: once with Aardonyx and again with sauropods more advanced than Chinshakiangosaurus.
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Subsequent phylogenetic analyses have since placed Balaur among basal avialans, the group that includes modern birds. Unlike other early paravians, Balaur had not just one but two large, retractable, sickle-shaped claws on each foot, and its limbs were proportionally shorter and heavier than those of its relatives. As with other dinosaurs from Hațeg, such as Magyarosaurus, a dwarf sauropod, its strange features have been argued to show the effects of its island habitat on its evolution.
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If Yutyrannus did prey on sauropods, it would have been one of two predatory animals known from the Yixian formation capable of doing so, the other being an as-of-yet undescribed large theropod known from a tooth embedded in the rib of a Dongbeititan.Xing L., Bell, P.R., Currie, P.J., Shibata M., Tseng K. & Dong Z. (2012). "A sauropod rib with an embedded theropod tooth: direct evidence for feeding behaviour in the Jehol group, China." Lethaia, (advance online publication). .
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The size of these assemblages can be attributed to the tendency of smaller animals to become trapped in mud. alt=Reconstructed skeleton of the giant sauropod Mamenchisaurus Limusaurus is the most abundant dinosaur found in the mud pits. One of the three pits, TBB2001, contained five Limusaurus individuals while other species are absent. TBB2002, on the other hand, contained five theropod dinosaur skeletons including two Limusaurus, two Guanlong and one individual of a not yet described species.
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The Rugocaudia cooneyi and Tatankacephalus cooneyorum are two new dinosaur species that were found southwest of Harlowton. The Rugocaudia cooneyi is a new sauropod dinosaur that was described and named by the paleontologist Cary Woodruff in 2012. The genus name Rugocaudia means “wrinkle tail” and the species name honors the landowner J. P. Cooney. The Tatankacephalus is a new ankylosaur dinosaur species found in 1997 by Bill and Kris Parsons, research associates of the Buffalo Museum of Science.
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In total he discovered about 90 species. This was a major boon to his reputation as his research was foundational to understanding that interval of American geologic history. Around March 1877 a man named Oramel Lucas discovered sauropod bones in a valley called Garden Park located a few miles north of Canon City, Colorado. He wrote to both Cope and O. C. Marsh, the famous rival paleontologists of the bone wars to alert them about his discovery.
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In places fossil sea cucumbers are abundant. During the late Albian, from about 115 to 110 million years ago sauropods and theropods left many footprints in the sediments that would later come to compose the Glen Rose Formation. The widely spaced limbs of the sauropod trackmakers suggest that they were likely brachiosaurids. Most of the tracks were left on an ancient coastal plain bordering the ancient Gulf of Mexico, although some were left in lagoonal sediments or intertidal areas.
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Restoration Skin impression As a sauropod, Haestasaurus would have been a large quadrupedal long-necked dinosaur. Little information is available about the specifics of its build because only a forelimb is known of the animal. An indication of the size of Haestasaurus is given by the length of the forelimb elements. The humerus is 599 millimetres long, the ulna 421 millimetres and the radius, situated next to the ulna in the lower arm, has a length of 404 millimetres.
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Neosauropoda is a clade within Dinosauria, coined in 1986 by Argentine paleontologist José Bonaparte and currently described as Saltasaurus loricatus, Diplodocus longus, and all animals directly descended from their most recent common ancestor. The group is composed of two subgroups: Diplodocoidea and Macronaria. Arising in the early Jurassic and persisting until the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, Neosauropoda contains the majority of sauropod genera, including genera such as Apatosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Diplodocus.Rogers, Kristina Curry, and Jeffrey A. Wilson.
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Liubangosaurus (meaning "Liubang lizard", after the name of the holotype locality) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous in what is now China. The type and only species is Liubangosaurus hei, first described by Mo Jinyou, Xu Xing and Eric Buffetaut in 2010. Liubangosaurus is known from the holotype NHMG8152, five nearly complete and articulated middle-caudal dorsal vertebrae that were collected from the Xinlong Formation in Fusui County, Guangxi Province. Jinyou et al.
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Life restorations of known individuals Lavocatisaurus was a medium-sized sauropod, and one of the only known dinosaurs from the Rayoso Formation. It is known from almost all of its anatomical elements, and it is known from a few specimens including juveniles and an adult. The adult specimen is currently under preparation, and thus the described fossils come from a number of juvenile individuals. The skull was elongate and similar in shape to that of Diplodocus.
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Proboscideans experienced several evolutionary trends, such as an increase in size, which led to many giant species that stood up to tall. As with other megaherbivores, including the extinct sauropod dinosaurs, the large size of elephants likely developed to allow them to survive on vegetation with low nutritional value. Their limbs grew longer and the feet shorter and broader. The feet were originally plantigrade and developed into a digitigrade stance with cushion pads and the sesamoid bone providing support.
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Puertasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous Period. It is known from a single specimen recovered from sedimentary rocks of the Cerro Fortaleza Formation in southwestern Patagonia, Argentina, which probably is Campanian or Maastrichtian in age. The only species is Puertasaurus reuili. Described by the paleontologist Fernando Novas and colleagues in 2005, it was named in honor of Pablo Puerta and Santiago Reuil, who discovered and prepared the specimen.
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Later studies indicate that it was actually recovered from the Early Jurassic Upper Elliot Formation. Before Antetonitrus and the other animals recovered from the Elliot Formation were recognized as sauropods, the oldest known sauropod had been Isanosaurus from the Rhaetian stage of Thailand. Early sauropods and their prosauropod relatives were found around the world as all of the continents were at the time united into the single supercontinent, Pangaea, which made dispersal across the entire terrestrial world possible.
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Other mass-death sites have been discovered subsequently. Those, along with multiple trackways, suggest that gregarious behavior was common in many early dinosaur species. Trackways of hundreds or even thousands of herbivores indicate that duck-billed (hadrosaurids) may have moved in great herds, like the American bison or the African Springbok. Sauropod tracks document that these animals traveled in groups composed of several different species, at least in Oxfordshire, England, although there is no evidence for specific herd structures.
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They were present in the derived and birdlike dromaeosaurid Rahonavis, but are lost in modern day's birds, probably due to their highly modified vertebrae. Within the Sauropodomorpha, they were present in prosauropods and most sauropods, but became independently lost in two cretaceous sauropod lineages, the Titanosauria and the Rebbachisauridae. The hyposphene usually consists of a vertical ridge and is situated below the postzygapophysis, whereas the hypantrum is situated between the prezygapophysis. In sauropods, this joint is extremely variable.
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The Mugher locality is approximately 151 million years old, about 14 million older than has previously been suggested for Paranthodon, as well as across both southern and eastern Africa. The fauna in the Mugher locality differ from elsewhere of the same time and place in Africa. While the Tendaguru has abundant stegosaurs, sauropods, ornithopods and theropods, the Mugher Mudstone preserves the stegosaur Paranthodon, a hypsilophodontid ornithopod, a probable sauropod, and theropods related to Allosauridae and Dromaeosauridae.
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Lamplughsaura is a genus of saurischian dinosaur from the Sinemurian-age (Early Jurassic) Dharmaram Formation of India, dating from between 196 and 190 million years ago. The type and only species is Lamplughsaura dharmaramensis. It is known from several partial skeletons of a large quadrupedal animal up to 10 meters (33 ft) long, and was either a basal sauropod or, less likely, a more basal sauropodomorph. It was named after Pamela Lamplugh, founder of the Indian Statistical Institute.
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In later sauropods, this excavations were enlarged to form extensive perforated pockets called pleurocoels. Contrasting the many sauropod-like features of the skeleton, the pelvis was relatively primitive, reminiscent of its "prosauropod" ancestors. One such feature is that the brevis shelf of the ilium has a fossa, which is not found in any more derived sauropods. The hallux (the first toe of the foot) showed a large claw that was flattened laterally, as seen in "prosauropods".
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Loricosaurus (meaning "armour lizard") is a genus of sauropod represented by a single species. It is a titanosaurian that lived near the end of the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 71 million years ago in the early Maastrichtian. Found in the province of Neuquen, Argentina in the Allen Formation. Due to the presence of armour, at first it was thought that it was an ankylosaur, but today it is considered to be the armour of a titanosaur.
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Petrified logs are also known from the site. The site was fluvial when its rocks were being deposited, with channel sands and muds, and concretions of calcite-cemented sandstone containing fossils. Following excavation and preparation of the majority of the fossils from the site, its sauropod species was given the name Paluxysaurus jonesi. Neck vertebrae The name Paluxysaurus was based on the specimen FWMSH 93B-10-18, a partial skull including an associated left maxilla, nasal, and teeth.
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The quarries listed above represent only the most important sites where Giraffatitan bones were found. In dozens of other Tendaguru locations finds were made of large single sauropod bones that were referred to the taxon in Janensch' publications but of which no field notes survive so that the precise circumstances of the discoveries are unknown. Partly this reflects a lack of systematic documentation by the expedition. Many documents were destroyed by an allied bombardment in 1943.
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Ardley Trackways is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest north- west of Bicester in Oxfordshire. It is a Geological Conservation Review site. This site is internationally important because it has trackways created by a herd of sauropod (herbivorous) dinosaurs, together with several carnivorous theropods, along a shoreline dating to the Middle Jurassic, around 165 million years ago. These are the only such trackways in England, and one of the few dating to the Middle Jurassic in the world.
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Chiayusaurus (meaning "Chia-yu-kuan lizard", after where it was found) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur known from teeth found in China and possibly also South Korea. Two species have been named for this obscure genus, although only the type, C. lacustris, is seen as valid today. It was originally named as Chiayüsaurus, but the ICZN does not permit special characters, so it has become Chiayusaurus. The old name can still be seen in older sources, though.
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II. Sauropod Dinosaurs (I), Sichuan Publishing House of Science and Technology, Chengdu, China, 89 pp The generic name was derived from Greek πρῶτος, protos, "first", and γνάθος, gnathos, "jaw". The specific name is derived from Greek ὀξύς, oxys, "sharp", and ὀδών, odon, "tooth". However, the generic name was preoccupied, already in use, by a genus of beetle, Protognathus Basilewsky 1950. The species was therefore renamed into the combinatio nova Prognathosaurus oxyodon by George Olshevsky in 1991.
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Another piece of evidence suggesting that some stegosaurids may have consumed more than just low vegetation was the discovery of the long-necked stegosaurid Miragaia longicollum. This dinosaur's neck has at least 17 cervical vertebrae achieved through the transformation of thoracic vertebrae into cervical vertebrae and possible lengthening of the centrum. This is more than most sauropod dinosaurs, which also achieved the elongation of the neck through similar mechanisms and had access to fodder higher off the ground.
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Those features are useful when attempting to explain trackway patterns of graviportal animals. When studying ichnology to calculate sauropod speed, there are a few problems, such as only providing estimates for certain gaits because of preservation bias, and being subject to many more accuracy problems. Most likely walking gait of Argentinosaurus To estimate the gait and speed of Argentinosaurus, the study performed a musculoskeletal analysis. The only previous musculoskeletal analyses were conducted on hominoids, terror birds, and other dinosaurs.
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Also in 1877, Richard Lydekker named another relative of Cetiosaurus, Titanosaurus, based on an isolated vertebra. Several macronarian sauropods; from left to right, Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, Giraffatitan, and Euhelopus. In 1878, the most complete sauropod yet was found and described by Othniel Charles Marsh, who named it Diplodocus. With this find, Marsh also created a new group to contain Diplodocus, Cetiosaurus, and their increasing roster of relatives to differentiate them from the other major groups of dinosaurs.
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Like in Riojasaurus and Massospondylus, two non-sauropod sauropodomorphs, the jugal forms a large part of the orbit edge, from the back to the front bottom corner. This feature has been seen in embryos of titanosaurs, but no adult individuals. The quadratojugal bone is an elongate element that has two projecting arms, one anterior and one dorsal. Like in other sauropods, the anterior process is longer than the dorsal, but in Europasaurus the arms are more similar lengths.
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Among macronarians, fossilized skin impressions are only known from Haestasaurus, Tehuelchesaurus and Saltasaurus. Both Tehuelchesaurus and Haestasaurus may be closely related to Europasaurus, and the characteristics of all sauropod skin impressions are similar. Haestasaurus, the first dinosaur known from skin impressions, preserved integument over a portion of the arm around the elbow joint. Dermal impressions are more widespread in the material of Tehuelchesaurus, where they are known from the areas of the forelimb, scapula and torso.
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Astrodon (aster: star, odon: tooth) is a dubious genus of large herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, related to Brachiosaurus, that lived in what is now the eastern United States during the Early Cretaceous period. Its fossils have been found in the Arundel Formation, which has been dated through palynomorphs to the Albian about 112 million years ago. Adults are estimated to have been more than 9 m (30 ft) high and 15 to 18 m (50 to 60 ft) long.
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While it was formerly considered a megaloolithid, Cairanoolithus is now considered to belong its own monotypic oofamily, Cairanoolithidae. It belongs to the dinosauroid- spherulitic basic type, a group including sauropod eggs and ornithischian eggs, but paraphyletically excluding theropod eggs. The cladistic analysis done by Selles and Galobart in 2015 recovered Cairanoolithus as a sister taxon to the clade of ornithopod eggs Guegoolithus, Spheroolithus, and Ovaloolithus. Therefore, they considered it likely that Cairanoolithus belongs to a non- ornithopod ornithischian dinosaur.
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"Yibinosaurus" (meaning "Yibin lizard") is the informal name given to an as yet undescribed genus of herbivorous dinosaur from the Early Jurassic. It was a sauropod which lived in what is now Sichuan, China. The suggested "type species", "Yibinosaurus zhoui", has not been formally described yet, but the formal publication is forthcoming, from Chinese paleontologist Ouyang Hui. "Yibinosaurus" was only briefly mentioned in the Chongqing Natural History Museum guidebook (2001) and is thus a nomen nudum.
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"Oshanosaurus" (meaning "Oshan lizard") is the informal name given to an as yet undescribed genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic period of Yunnan, China. Its fossils were found in the Lower Lufeng Series. The intended "type species", "Oshanosaurus youngi", was coined by Zhao in 1985. It has sometimes been associated with heterodontosaurids, which appears to be due to the juxtaposition of a species of Dianchungosaurus (formerly thought to be a heterodontosaurid) in the text of Zhao (1985).
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Lingwulong is a genus of dicraeosaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Early or Middle Jurassic Yanan Formation in Lingwu, Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui, China. The type and only species is L. shenqi, known from several partial skeletons. It is the earliest-aged neosauropod ever discovered, as well as the only definite diplodocoid from east Asia. Its exact age is uncertain, but it lived between the late Toarcian and Bajocian ages, with an midpoint estimate age of 174 Ma.
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Burian depicted the American sauropods Brontosaurus (1940), Diplodocus (1952 & 1965?), and Barosaurus walking on land in elephantine fashion, and his 1941 reconstruction of the East African sauropod Brachiosaurus (the only image showing the main subject in water) became one of the most reproduced dinosaur images in history. Although it is now considered unlikely that Brachiosaurus could have inhaled in deep water (unless it had a strengthened pleural cavity as do some whales), the reconstruction is remarkably realistic and was still being reproduced 60 years after it was painted. As with many of his works, Burian's sauropod reconstructions reached iconic status, with the celebrated palaeontologist William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994) noting: "The ideas as well as the pictorially beautiful restorations of Zdenek Burian, done under the direction of the late Joseph Augusta (1962), create a lasting impression that appears to be decisive. The Czechoslovakian experts have placed us all in their debt and the life- restorations of Brontosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus provide debating points as well as aesthetic satisfaction" (The Dinosaurs, 1970: 189).
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Hesham Sallam (; born 1975) is an Egyptian paleontologist and the founder of the Mansoura University Paleontology Center (MUVP), the first vertebrate paleontology program in the Middle East. He works as an associate professor at the American University in Cairo and Mansoura University. Sallam led the discovery and description of Mansourasaurus shahinae, a species of sauropod dinosaur from Egypt, which has improved understanding of the prehistory of Africa during the latest Cretaceous period. His work has helped popularize paleontology in Egypt.
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Opisthocoelicaudia is a genus of sauropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous Period discovered in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. The type species is Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii. A well-preserved skeleton lacking only the head and neck was unearthed in 1965 by Polish and Mongolian scientists, making Opisthocoelicaudia one of the best known sauropods from the Late Cretaceous. Tooth marks on this skeleton indicate that large carnivorous dinosaurs had fed on the carcass and possibly had carried away the now-missing parts.
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To date, only two additional, much less complete specimens are known, including part of a shoulder and a fragmentary tail. A relatively small sauropod, Opisthocoelicaudia measured about in length. Like other sauropods, it would have been characterised by a small head sitting on a very long neck and a barrel shaped trunk carried by four column-like legs. The name Opisthocoelicaudia means "posterior cavity tail", alluding to the unusual, opisthocoel condition of the anterior tail vertebrae that were concave on their posterior sides.
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"Die Kreide-Dinosaurier aus Shantung" [The Cretaceous dinosaurs from Shantung]. Palaeontologia Sinica, Series C 6(1): 1-67 The name refers to the marshy area of the finds and to truga, Swedish swamp shoes, which according to Wiman resembled the wide feet of the animal. This name however, already belonged to a bird because the Caspian tern had once been named Helopus caspius Wagler 1832. The sauropod dinosaur was therefore renamed Euhelopus (True marsh-foot) in 1956 by Alfred Sherwood Romer.
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Size comparison of selected giant sauropod dinosaurs Sauropodomorph size is difficult to estimate given their usually fragmentary state of preservation. Sauropods are often preserved without their tails, so the margin of error in overall length estimates is high. Mass is calculated using the cube of the length, so for species in which the length is particularly uncertain, the weight is even more so. Estimates that are particularly uncertain (due to very fragmentary or lost material) are preceded by a question mark.
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Further study determined that the fossil belonged to a new genus and species of early sauropod, which Wild named Ohmdenosaurus liasicus in a 1978 publication. The fossil, which lacks an inventory number, consists of a right tibia (shinbone) together with the upper bones of the ankle, the astragalus and the calcaneus. The bones, disarticulated in the fossil, show signs of weathering, evidence that the animal died on land and that only later were its bones washed into the sea and buried.
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Skeletons at the North American Museum of Ancient Life with alternate spike arrangement Gastonia lived in a partly wooded habitat, with riverine forests being separated by open areas. The climate was rather dry with a short wet season. Other dinosaurs of the Yellow Cat include the Euornithopoda Hippodraco, Cedrorestes and Iguanacolossus; the sauropod Cedarosaurus and the Theropoda Falcarius, Geminiraptor, Martharaptor, Nedcolbertia, Utahraptor and Yurgovuchia. Gastonia was the only ankylosaurian present and one of the most common species of its fauna.
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Even by 1936, it was recognized that no sauropod had more than one hand claw preserved, and this one claw is now accepted as the maximum number throughout the entire group. The single front claw bone is slightly curved and squarely shortened on the front end. The hip bones included robust ilia and the fused pubes and ischia. The tibia and fibula bones of the lower leg were different from the slender bones of Diplodocus, but nearly indistinguishable from those of Camarasaurus.
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O.C. Marsh. The head is based on material now assigned to Brachiosaurus sp. In 1879, Othniel Charles Marsh, a professor of paleontology at Yale University, announced the discovery of a large and fairly complete sauropod skeleton from Morrison Formation rocks at Como Bluff, Wyoming. He identified it as belonging to an entirely new genus and species, which he named Brontosaurus excelsus, meaning "thunder lizard", from the Greek / meaning "thunder" and / meaning "lizard", and from the Latin excelsus, "noble" or "high".
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Xenoposeidon (meaning "strange or alien Poseidon", in allusion to Sauroposeidon) is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of England, living about 140 million years ago. It is known from a single partial vertebra with unusual features, unlike those of other sauropods. This bone was first discovered in the early 1890s but received little attention until it was found by University of Portsmouth student Mike Taylor, who formally described and named it in 2007 with Darren Naish.
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The partial posterior back vertebra, cataloged as BMNH R2095, was briefly described by English naturalist and paleontologist Richard Lydekker in 1893. He thought that it might belong to Cetiosaurus brevis, better known today as Pelorosaurus conybearei. The bone attracted little attention for decades, sitting on a shelf at the British Natural History Museum in London for 113 years. Mike Taylor, a sauropod vertebra specialist, stumbled upon it and became interested in the unusual specimen, entering into a description of it with Darren Naish.
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Fossils of Futalognkosaurus were found in the Neuquén province of Argentina in 2000, and were scientifically described in 2007. The genus name is derived from the local indigenous language Mapudungun and is pronounced foo-ta-logn- koh-sohr-us: "futa" means "giant" and "lognko" means "chief".Calvo, J.O., Porfiri, J.D., González-Riga, B.J., and Kellner, A.W. (2007) "A new Cretaceous terrestrial ecosystem from Gondwana with the description of a new sauropod dinosaur". Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 79(3): 529-41.
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There are also differences; these might indicate that the juvenile is not a B. altithorax individual after all, but belongs to a new species. Alternatively, they might be explained as juvenile traits that would have changed when the animal matured. Such ontogenetic changes are especially to be expected in the proportions of an organism. The middle neck vertebrae of SMA 0009 are remarkably short for a sauropod, being just 1.8 times longer than high, compared with a ratio of 4.5 in Giraffatitan.
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Second Thai–Lao Friendship Bridge Savan-Vegas, a casino in Savannakhet City Locally reconstructed sauropod Tangvayosaurus, Savannakhet That Inghang Buddha statues workshop, Wat Xayaphoum St Teresa's Catholic Church Savannakhet () is a province of Laos. The name derives from Savanh Nakhone ('heavenly district' or 'land of fertility suitable for agriculture') the province's original name. It bears the same meaning as Nakhon Sawan, a city in Thailand. The province is in the southern part of the country and is the largest province in Laos.
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An American Museum field party led by Edwin Harris Colbert found a bonebed including the skeletons of more than 1,000 Coelophysis at Ghost Ranch. Later, in 1953 University of New Mexico graduate student William Chenoweth found three important sites where dinosaurs were preserved in Morrison Formation rocks. He found a fragmentary Allosaurus, sauropods, and Stegosaurus. Theropod and sauropod tracks under water in the Paluxy River. The famous Montanan Tertiary deposits of the Ruby Valley basin were also first studied in 1947.
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Demandasaurus (meaning "Demanda lizard") is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur from early Cretaceous (late Barremian – early Aptian stage) deposits of Spain. Demandasaurus is known from an incomplete but associated skeleton that includes cranial and postcranial remains. It was collected from the Castrillo de la Reina Formation in Burgos Province of Spain. It was first named by Fidel Torcida Fernández-Baldor, José Ignacio Canudo, Pedro Huerta, Diego Montero, Xabier Pereda Suberbiola and Leonardo Salgado in 2011 and the type species is Demandasaurus darwini.
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Iguanacolossus compared to the fauna of the Yellow Cat Member from the Cedar Mountain Formation (Iguanacolossus in green) Iguanacolossus was recovered in the Yellow Cat Member from the Cedar Mountain Formation. However, this Member is divided in two beds: Upper and Lower Yellow Cat; Iguanacolossus was unearthed from the Lower bed, where it shared its environment with Theropods: Falcarius, Geminiraptor and Yurgovuchia. The sauropod Mierasaurus and the turtle Naomichelys. There are also indeterminate Goniopholidids crocodiles known from the Lower Yellow Cat.
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They set the bird group as representing the theropods with the reptiles representing the sauropod group. The laid eggs of each species where compared with one another over the course of the study as well as against the fossilized eggs. The results that was retrieved from the experiment was that while sauropods laid smaller eggs in greater amounts each year, dinosaur of the theropod group was revealed to lay larger eggs less frequently over the years, similar to modern birds today.
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Restoration The tall neural spines on the tail vertebrae identify Amazonsaurus as a diplodocoid sauropod, but the fragmentary nature of the only known specimen makes it difficult to place A. maranhensis more specifically within the superfamily Diplodocoidea. However, some features of these vertebrae suggest it may be a late-surviving member of a line of basal diplodocoids. At least one published cladistic analysis shows Amazonsaurus to be more derived than rebbachisaurids, but basal to dicraeosaurids and diplodocids within Diplodocoidea (Salgado et al., 2004).
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Today however, many considerably more basal sauropods than Cetiosaurus are known. Modern exact cladistic research has not resulted in a single clear outcome about the position of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis in the sauropod tree. Sometimes a Cetiosauridae was recovered, a clade uniting Cetiosaurus oxoniensis with species as the Indian Barapasaurus, the South American Patagosaurus or the African Chebsaurus. Other studies indicate that the traditional Cetiosauridae were paraphyletic and recover Cetiosaurus oxoniensis in a basal position in the Eusauropoda, basal in the NeosauropodaJ.
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Speculative life restoration based on Amargasaurus Bajadasaurus is classified as a member of the sauropod family Dicraeosauridae. As all sauropods, dicraeosaurids were large, four-legged herbivores with a long neck and tail and proportionally very small head. They were, however, small in comparison with most other sauropods, roughly reaching sizes of present-day Asian Elephants, and their neck was comparatively short. Long bifurcated neural spines were a common feature of the group, although only extremely elongated in Bajadasaurus and the closely related Amargasaurus.
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The Bajada Colorada Formation overlies the Quintuco and Picún Leufú Formations. At its top, it is separated by the overlying Agrio Formation by an unconformity (sedimentation hiatus) that has been dated at 134 mya. Bajadasaurus stems from the Bajada Colorada locality, the type locality of the formation. The locality yielded the remains of another sauropod, the diplodocid Leinkupal laticauda, as well as of several species of theropod that can be ascribed to basal tetanurans and possibly to abelisauroids and deinonychosaurians.
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The largest land mammal today is the African elephant weighing up to 10.4 tonnes with a shoulder height of up to . The largest land mammal of all time may have also been a proboscidean: Palaeoloxodon namadicus, which may have weighed up to with a shoulder height up to , surpassing several sauropod dinosaurs (in height). The earliest known proboscidean is Eritherium, followed by Phosphatherium, a small animal about the size of a fox. These both date from late Paleocene deposits of Morocco.
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As a result, the Baron enrolled at the University of Vienna and soon became one of the principal paleobiological researchers in central Europe, and the founder of paleophysiology.Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Ilona's initial discovery turned out to be a duck-billed dinosaur. Subsequently, the remains of an armoured dinosaur, a long-necked sauropod, a flying reptile of the Pterosauria type and several other dinosaurs were excavated from that same hill in Szentpéterfalva.
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Jobaria tiguidensis restoration Jobaria was a primitive sauropod, about long and estimated to weigh about . In 2016 Gregory S. Paul gave a lower estimation of and . Its backbone and tail were simple compared to the complex vertebrae and whiplash tail of the later North America sauropods Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. It may also have been able to rear up on its hind legs as Paul Sereno concluded, after comparing the ratios of humerus and femur circumferences in Jobaria to extant elephants.
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Fossils are especially common in the Kirkwood and Sundays River Formations, although regarding the Sundays River Formation the most common fossils are of invertebrates. Past expeditions within the Kirkwood Formation have uncovered several dis-articulated remains of theropod, sauropod, and ornithopod dinosaurs, and a plesiosaur fossil is known from the Sundays River Formation. Fossil remains of amphibians, lizards, fishes, and small mammals have also been recovered. A variety of bivalve, gastropod, ammonites, and ostracods are likewise known from these deposits.
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Dyslocosaurus (meaning "hard-to-place lizard") is the name given in 1992 to a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period of Wyoming, North America. The holotype or type specimen the genus is based on, AC 663, is part of the collection of the Amherst College Museum of Natural History. It was collected by professor Frederic Brewster Loomis. However, the only available information regarding its provenance is that given on the label: "Lance Creek", a county in east Wyoming.
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Additional joints like the hyposphene-hypantrum articulations, which add rigidity to the vertebral column, are found in several different reptile lineages; a known example are the zygosphene-zygantrum articulations found in snakes. Hyposphene-hypantrum articulations are found in several unrelated groups within the Archosauromorpha. They occur especially in large forms, for example in rauisuchids and in silesaurids and – within the Dinosauria – in saurischians. They evolved to make the vertebral column more rigid and stable and probably had supported the gigantism in sauropod dinosaurs.
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They were typical for most dinosaur lineages; however, they became lost in several derived theropod lineages in the wake of an increasingly S-shaped curvature of the neck. Several scientific papers have observed that epipophyses were present in various non-dinosaur archosauromorphs. These include several pseudosuchians (Batrachotomus, Revueltosaurus, Xilousuchus, Effigia, Hesperosuchus), basal avemetatarsalians (aphanosaurs) non-archosaur archosauriforms (Vancleavea, Halazhaisuchus), rhynchosaurs, several tanystropheids, and allokotosaurs. Sauropod-oriented paleontologist Mike Taylor has informally suggested that epipophyses were also present in the vertebrae of certain pterosaurs.
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The Twin Mountains Formation, also known as the Twin Mountain Formation, is a sedimentary rock formation, within the Trinity Group, found in Texas of the United States of America. It is a terrestrial formation of Aptian age (Lower Cretaceous), and is notable for its dinosaur fossils. Dinosaurs from this formation include the large theropod Acrocanthosaurus, the sauropod Sauroposeidon, as well as the ornithopods Tenontosaurus and Convolosaurus. It is the lowermost unit of the lower Cretaceous, lying unconformably on Carboniferous strata.
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Therizinosaurs were the most abundant theropods in the Bayan Shireh Formation in terms of biodiversity; in addition to Segnosaurus, members of the group included Erlikosaurus, Enigmosaurus, and possibly a fourth type. Other theropods included the tyrannosaur Alectrosaurus, the ornithomimid Garudimimus, and the dromaeosaur Achillobator. Other dinosaurs included the ankylosaur Talarurus, the hadrosaur Gobihadros, the sauropod Erketu, and the ceratopsian Graciliceratops. Dinosaur eggs, some of which were identified as Dendroolithidae, as well as footprints of dinosaurs and crocodyliforms, have also been found.
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This research indicates that at least two, possibly three dinosaur assemblages are contained within the formation. The oldest of these assemblages is from the Yellow Cat, Poison Strip and basal Ruby Ranch members. The small, Ornitholestes-like theropod Nedcolbertia and the brachiosaurid sauropod Cedarosaurus may be considered as relics, with their closest relatives in the Morrison Formation. In contrast, the polacanthid ankylosaur Gastonia and a yet unnamed iguanodontid are similar to related forms from the Lower Cretaceous of southern England.
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With the exception of Argentinosaurus (included to fill a gap in time), these graphs show only the length of sauropods for whom near- complete fossil skeletons are known. It doesn't show other very large sauropods (see Dinosaur size#Sauropods) because these are only known from very incomplete skeletons. The ratio of skull length to body length is much higher in Eoraptor than in sauropods. The longest skull graphed is of Nemegtosaurus, which is not thought be a particularly large sauropod.
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Sauropod skull bones are rarely found, and the Amargasaurus skull is only the second skull known from a member of the Dicraeosauridae. Major parts of the skeleton were found in their original anatomical position: the vertebral column of the neck and back, which consisted of 22 articulated vertebrae, was found connected to both the skull and the sacrum. Of the skull, only the temporal region and the braincase are preserved. The sacrum, despite being partly eroded prior to burial, is fairly complete.
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Bonaparte dug up a large cervical vertebra in 1981 and reported it as a cf. Antarctosaurus. The old site was relocated and new excavations were carried out between 13 and 17 January and 14 to 19 March 2019, and a new site was discovered on the Estancia La Anita. A whole new fauna came to light on an area of . including six concentrations of bones that could be assigned to the original find, which was now recognized as a new sauropod species.
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Restoration Giraffatitan was a sauropod, one of a group of four-legged, plant- eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails and relatively small brains. It had a giraffe-like build, with long forelimbs and a very long neck. The skull had a tall arch anterior to the eyes, consisting of the bony nares, a number of other openings, and "spatulate" teeth (resembling chisels). The first toe on its front foot and the first three toes on its hind feet were clawed.
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Duriatitan is a genus of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic in what is now England. The holotype specimen of Duriatitan, BMNH 44635, is a partial left upper arm bone which was found by R.I. Smith near Sandsfoot in the lower Kimmeridge Clay from Dorset. The type species, D. humerocristatus, was described in 1874 by John Hulke as a species of Cetiosaurus. The specific name refers to the deltopectoral crest, crista, on the upper arm bone, humerus.
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Mamenchisaurus ( , or spelling pronunciation ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur including several species, known for their remarkably long necks which made up half the total body length. It is known from numerous species which ranged in time from 160 to 145 million years ago, from the Oxfordian age of late Jurassic Period in China. The largest species, which according to Gregory S. Paul was M. sinocanadorum, may have reached in length and possibly weighed 50-80 tonnes (55-88 short tons).
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In lateral view, the dentary shows a prominent ridge running diagonally across the bone. Apart from Chinshakiangosaurus, this feature is only known from prosauropods, where it is interpreted as the insertion point of a fleshy cheek. Such cheeks would have prohibited food falling out of the mouth and may be a hint that the food underwent some degree of oral processing before it was swallowed. If Chinshakiangosaurus indeed was a basal sauropod, this would be the first evidence of cheeks in this group.
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Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 54 (2), 2009: 213-220 abstractMuseums and TV have dinosaurs' posture all wrong, claim scientists. Guardian, 27 May 2009 Research published in 2013 that studied ostrich necks, however, took the estimated flexibility of sauropod necks into doubt. Studies by Matthew Cobley et al revealed, using computer modeling, that muscle attachments and cartilage present in the neck would likely have limited the flexibility to a considerable degree. The authors cautioned against estimating range of motion from just using the bones alone.
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The "Barrow Kipper", a plesiosaur skeleton excavated at Barrow upon Soar New Walk Museum has a significant collection of extinct lifeforms. Two Mesozoic reptile skeletons are permanently on display — a cetiosaur found in Rutland, and a plesiosaur from Barrow upon Soar.Official website The Rutland Dinosaur, affectionately nicknamed George, is a specimen of Cetiosaurus oxoniensis. The dinosaur, which is among the most complete sauropod skeletons in the world, was discovered in June 1968, in the Williamson Cliffe quarry near Little Casterton in Rutland.
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Although the quarry operator was cooperative, excavation was complicated by the near- vertical orientation of the layers that limited access, as well as by the ongoing quarrying. The sauropod material could not be excavated directly from the layer but had to be collected from lose blocks that resulting from blasting. The exact origin of the bone material was therefore unclear, but could later be traced to a single bed (bed 83). An excavation conducted between July 20–28 of 2000 rescued ca.
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Destroyed specimens include DFMMh/FV 100, which included the best preserved vertebral series and the only complete pelvis. Block with partially prepared bones of specimen DFMMh/FV 709 In 2006, the new sauropod taxon was formally described as Europasaurus holgeri. The given etymology for the genus name is "reptile from Europe", and the specific name honours Holger Lüdtke, the discoverer of the first fossils. Given the comparatively small size of the bones, it was initially assumed that they stem from juvenile individuals.
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The "twisted" teeth of Europasaurus were found to be one of the unique features of Brachiosauridae, which could mean a confident referral of isolated sauropod teeth to the clade. A further phylogenetic analysis was performed on Brachiosauridae, based on that of D'Emic (2012). This phylogeny, conducted by D'Emic et al. (2016), resolved a very similar placement of Europasaurus within Brachiosauridae, although Sonorasaurus was placed in a clade with Giraffatitan, and Lusotitan was placed in a polytomy with Abydosaurus and Cedarosaurus.
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The latter was initially believed to be the oldest known mushroom-forming fungus (Agaricomycetes). Later examinations now make it likely that P. digiustoi was, in fact, part of the periderm of the fossilized bark of A. mirabilis. It is believed that the long necks of sauropod dinosaurs may have evolved specifically for browsing the foliage of the typically very tall A. mirabilis and other Araucaria trees. The energy-rich Araucaria leaves required long digestion times and were low in protein.
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Pneumatic structures of "Angloposeidon" "Angloposeidon" is the informal name given to a sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight in southern England. It was a possible brachiosaurid but has not been formally named. Darren Naish, a notable vertebrate palaeontologist, has worked with the specimen and has recommended that this name only be used informally and that it not be published. However, he published it himself in his book Tetrapod Zoology Book One from 2010.
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Diagram showing preserved parts of the "B." nougaredi sacrum in blue "Brachiosaurus" nougaredi was a sauropod dinosaur of uncertain affinities. It was originally assigned to the genus Brachiosaurus in 1960, though it certainly represents a different genus, and probably a different family. In 1958, the French petroleum geologist F. Nougarède reported to have discovered fragmentary brachiosaurid remains in eastern Algeria, in the Sahara Desert. Based on these, Albert-Félix de Lapparent described and named the species Brachiosaurus nougaredi in 1960.
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Also, its subdued ornamentation contrasts strongly with the heavily sculpted eggshells of sauropod eggs, and it has a different pore system. Eggs of ornithopods (Spheroolithidae and Ovaloolithidae), on the other hand, show much closer similarity to cairanoolithids in ornamentation and pore system. However, ornithopod eggs are typically much smaller, and the crystal structure of their eggshell units is distinct. Restorations of Struthiosaurus, the possible parent of Cairanoolithus The cladistic analysis by Sellés and Galobart in 2015 supported an ornithischian parentage.
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"Khetranisaurus" (meaning "Khetran lizard", for the Khetran people of Pakistan) is an informal taxon of titanosaurian sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Balochistan, western Pakistan (also spelled "Khateranisaurus" in some early reports). The proposed species is "K. barkhani", described by M. Sadiq Malkani in 2006, and it is based on a tail vertebra, found in the Maastrichtian-age Vitakri Member of the Pab Formation. It was assigned to "Pakisauridae" (used as a synonym of Titanosauridae), along with "Pakisaurus" and "Sulaimanisaurus".
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The ages of the Aguja Formation and its primary fossil-bearing unit, the Upper Shale, are not well understood. Two radiometric dates have been taken from different sections of the upper shale, yielding ages of 72.6 Ma +/- 1.5 Ma old, and 76.9 Ma +/- 1.2 Ma old, respectively. The contact with the overlying Javelina Formation has been estimated at about 70 Ma agoWoodward, H. N. (2005). Bone histology of the sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis from the Javelina Formation, Big Bend National Park, Texas.
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Among these is the famous theropod nest found at the beach of Paimogo, which contains eggs with embryos inside, probably belonging to Lourinhanosaurus. Many of the fossils that belong to the Museu da Lourinhã are on display at Dinoparque Lourinhã, such as the sauropod Zby atlanticus, Lourinhanosaurus antunesi, and Torvosaurus gurneyi. The paleontological research has been conducted by the paleontologists Miguel Telles Antunes, Octávio Mateus and others, in association with the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The museum receives about 25.000 visitors every year.
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The most important specimen found was the incomplete skeleton of a large abelisaurid theropod, which was found near several titanosaurid sauropod bones. Pycnonemosaurus nevesi was named from the Greek word pycnós meaning dense, némos meaning pastures and woods, and saûrus meaning reptile or lizard. This naming was an allusion to Mato Grosso State, where the remains were found. The specific name was named after the late Dr. Iedo Batista Neves, who passed in 2000, who encouraged the pursuit of paleontological studies, particularly of Alexander Kellner.
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Both species were moved to a new genus, Tornieria, in 1911. Upon further study of these remains and many other sauropod fossils from the hugely productive Tendaguru Beds, Werner Janensch moved the species once again, this time to the North American genus Barosaurus. In 1991, "Gigantosaurus" robustus was recognized as a titanosaur and placed in a new genus, Janenschia, as J. robusta. Meanwhile, many paleontologists suspected "Barosaurus" africanus was also distinct from the North American genus, which was confirmed when the material was redescribed in 2006.
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Life restoration Size diagram Like other sauropods, Opisthocoelicaudia had a small head on a long neck, a barrel-shaped body on four columnar limbs, and a long tail. It was relatively small for a sauropod; the type specimen was estimated at to from the head to the tip of the tail. The body mass has been estimated at , , , and in separate studies. The skull and neck are not preserved, but the reconstruction of the nuchal ligament indicates the possession of a neck of medium length of roughly .
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Europejara and Pelecanimimus in an ecologic competition The Las Hoyas lagerstätte has produced numerous other exquisitely preserved species, including the enantiornithine birds Iberomesornis, Concornis, and Eoalulavis, along with non-avian theropod teeth, Concavenator remains, and a few fragmentary sauropod bones. Coarse sediments of the La Hoyas lagerstätte have produced bones of the ornithopod dinosaur Iguanodon. The lagerstätte beds have also yielded remains of lizards and salamanders, as well as of the unique early mammal Spinolestes. Several pterosaurs like Europejara and crocodylomorphs are also known.
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Burness, G.P. and Flannery, T. (2001). "Dinosaurs, Dragonslayer, and Dwarfs: The Evolution of Maximal Body Size." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(25): 14518-14523. The complete right humerus measured 1.69 meters (5.54 ft) long which at the time of discovery was the longest known in a Cretaceous sauropod; this was surpassed in 2016 with the discovery of Notocolossus which had a 1.76 m (5 ft 9 in) humerus. Using Saltasaurus as a guide, Carpenter estimated its length at around in 2006.
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The Mongolian paleontologist Altangerel Perle described and named the new genus Segnosaurus in 1979, based on lower jaws and much of the hindlimbs. He also coined the newer Segnosauridae (now synonym of Therizinosauridae) to contain this species. Translated paper In the same year, paleontologist Dong Zhiming described the genus Nanshiungosaurus, but wrongly interpreted the remains to have pertained to some kind of dwarf sauropod. Translated paper In the following year, Barsbold and Perle coined the family Segnosauria (now Therizinosauria) to contain the Segnosauridae and kin.
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2005, No. 1, pp. 188-195. Some extinct animals such as sauropod dinosaurs appear to have used stones to grind tough plant matter. A rare example of this is the Early Cretaceous theropod Caudipteryx zoui from northeastern China, which was discovered with a series of small stones, interpreted as gastroliths, in the area of its skeleton that would have corresponded with its abdominal region. Aquatic animals, such as plesiosaurs, may have used them as ballast, to help balance themselves or to decrease their buoyancy, as crocodiles do.
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Nigersaurus is a genus of rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived during the middle Cretaceous period, about 115 to 105 million years ago. It was discovered in the Elrhaz Formation in an area called Gadoufaoua, in the Republic of Niger. Fossils of this dinosaur were first described in 1976, but it was only named Nigersaurus taqueti in 1999, after further and more complete remains were found and described. The genus name means "Niger reptile", and the specific name honours the palaeontologist Philippe Taquet, who discovered the first remains.
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Ambondro mahabo was described by a team led by John Flynn in a 1999 paper in Nature. The scientific name derives from the village of Ambondromahabo, close to which the fossil was found. It is known from the Bathonian (middle Jurassic, about 167 million years ago) of the Mahajanga Basin in northwestern Madagascar, in the Isalo III unit, the youngest of the three rock layers that make up the Isalo "Group". This unit has also yielded crocodyliform and plesiosaur teeth and remains of the sauropod Lapparentosaurus.
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Since Patagosaurus is known from many specimens, including at least one juvenile, its anatomy and growth are fairly well understood. Both ages exhibit the typical features of a sauropod, a long neck, small head, a long tail, and being quadrupedal. The juvenile exhibits features different from the adult in regions like the mandible, pectoral girdle, pelvis and hindlimb, although overall their anatomy is quite similar. The many known specimens help fill in gaps in the anatomy of the genus, such as the forelimb and skull.
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Size comparison with a human Patagosaurus is a sauropod that possessed a general and unspecialized bauplan of being quadrupedal, having an elongate neck, a small head, and a very long tail. Therefore, it is similar to Cetiosaurus and other related genera, who possessed the same morphology. It has been estimated that it was about long and weighed about . An earlier estimate by John S. McIntosh and his colleagues in 1997, found that Patagosaurus was approximately long, and also in weight, similar to the later estimates by Holtz.
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In 2020, no lectotype was selected, the naming authors maintaining the original syntype series indicated by von Huene, consisting of forty-nine bones. The Reuchenette Formation in which they were found dates from the early Kimmeridgian, about 157 million years old. They include some neck vertebrae, many tail vertebrae and material from the shoulder girdle, the pelvis and limbs. Seventy-five additional sauropod specimens in the collection of the museum, from the same site as the syntypes, were in 2020 referred to the species.
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The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Camarasaurus, Brachiosaurus, Barosaurus, Diplodocus, and Apatosaurus. Dinosaurs that lived alongside Marshosaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus and Othnielosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Stokesosaurus, Ornitholestes and Allosaurus, which accounted for 70 to 75% of theropod specimens and was at the top trophic level of the Morrison food web. Stegosaurus is commonly found at the same sites as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, and Diplodocus.
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Bajadasaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous epoch (late Berriasian to Valanginian stages) of northern Patagonia, Argentina. It was first described in 2019 based on a single specimen found in 2010 that includes a largely complete skull and parts of the neck. The only species is Bajadasaurus pronuspinax. The genus is classified as a member of the Dicraeosauridae, a group of comparatively small and short-necked sauropods that lived from the Early or Middle Jurassic to the end of the Early Cretaceous.
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Related genus Amargasaurus, whose similarly elongate neural spines were compared to those of Bajadasaurus Dicraeosaurids are one of the three principal families comprising the Diplodocoidea, a major subdivision of sauropod dinosaurs. Within Diplodocoidea, dicraeosaurids form the sister group of the Diplodocidae, while the third family, the Rebbachisauridae, is more distantly related. Dicraeosaurids and diplodocids are united within the group Flagellicaudata, which is named after the whip-like tail characteristic for the group. In their 2019 description of Bajadasaurus, Gallina and colleagues recognised seven additional dicraeosaurid genera.
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Those of Apatosaurus ajax are known exclusively from the upper Brushy Basin Member, about 152–151 mya. A.louisae fossils are rare, known only from one site in the upper Brushy Basin Member; they date to the late Kimmeridgian stage, about 151mya. Additional Apatosaurus remains are known from similarly aged or slightly younger rocks, but they have not been identified as any particular species, and thus may instead belong to Brontosaurus. The Morrison Formation records a time when the local environment was dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs.
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More recent studies have made a number of suggestions regarding the possibility of such an animal. One analysis of the surviving evidence, and the biological plausibility of such a large land animal, has suggested that the enormous size of this animal were over-estimates due partly to typographical errors in the original 1878 description. More recently, it was suggested by paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter that the species is a rebbachisaurid, rather than a diplodocid sauropod. He therefore used Limaysaurus instead of Diplodocus as a basis for size estimates.
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Gustav Fischer Verlag:Stuttgart p. 1-87. there is no evidence for this, and recent reviews have considered it to be an indeterminate sauropod. The type species, A. bauri, was named by Robert Broom in 1904 from a cervical vertebra, femur, an ungual phalanx and a scapula. The fossils were recovered in 1903 from a quarry by workmen who did not recognize them as dinosaur specimens, so many of the bones, probably including the rest of the once near-complete holotype, were made into bricks and thus destroyed.
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His dinosaur was much smaller than he believed, because he mistook a partial humerus for an ulna. However, since Kim was the first to publish the name Ultrasaurus, the name officially applied to the small South Korean sauropod, and could no longer be used as an official name for Jensen's giant specimen. Jensen published a paper describing his original discovery in 1985, but since the name Ultrasaurus was already in use (or "preoccupied"), his discovery was renamed in 1991 to Ultrasauros. However, Jensen also made a mistake.
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Argentinosaurus is a genus of giant sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Argentina. Although it is only known from fragmentary remains, Argentinosaurus is one of the largest-known land animals of all time, if not the largest, with length estimates ranging from and weight estimates from . It was a member of Titanosauria, the dominant group of sauropods during the Cretaceous. The first Argentinosaurus bone was discovered in 1987 by a farmer on his farm near the city of Plaza Huincul.
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Paul estimated a greater length of or greater in 2019, restoring the unknown neck and tail of Argentinosaurus after those of other large South American titanosaurs. alt=Hypothetical drawing showing Argentinosaurus in side view as it could have appeared in life Paul estimated a body mass of for Argentinosaurus in 1994. In 2004, Mazzetta and colleagues provided a range of and considered to be the most likely mass, making it the heaviest sauropod known from good material. Holtz estimated a mass of in 2007.
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Relationships within Titanosauria are amongst the least understood of all groups of dinosaurs. Traditionally, the majority of sauropod fossils from the Cretaceous had been referred to a single family, the Titanosauridae, which has been in use since 1893. In their 1993 first description of Argentinosaurus, Bonaparte and Coria noted it differed from typical titanosaurids in having hyposphene-hypantrum articulations. As these articulations were also present in the titanosaurids Andesaurus and Epachthosaurus, Bonaparte and Coria proposed a separate family for the three genera, the Andesauridae.
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Due to its robust build, Blikanasaurus is hypothesized to have been an obligate quadruped, unlike what is characteristic of more derived sauropodomorphs. Due to this feature, Blikanasaurus was thought initially to be a basal sauropod. Blikanasaurus is now considered to be a basal sauropodomorph; however, due to the lack of complete specimens, little remains known about this enigmatic taxon. Some paleontologists claimed a case to group Blikanasaurus within the subfamily Blikanasauridae, but this subfamily has not been formally accepted due to it lacking definitive taxa.
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The holotype and only known specimen (USNM 337987) consists of portions of the scapulocoracoid and pelvis, elements from the fore and hind limbs, vertebrae, osteoderms, a skull fragment, and one tooth. These remains had been labelled as those of a sauropod in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution, but were many years later recognized as ankylosaurian by M.K. Brett-Surman. They were subsequently studied by ankylosaur expert Walter Preston Coombs, Jr, who named them in 1995 as the type species Texasetes pleurohalio. Vickaryous et al.
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Callovosaurus was found in the lower Oxford Clay, which has yielded a diverse reptile assemblage: ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, crocodyliforms, pterosaurs, sauropod dinosaurs, the stegosaurids Loricatosaurus and the dubious Lexovisaurus, and the armoured dinosaur Sarcolestes. These rocks were once thought to be somewhat younger, from the Oxfordian of the Late Jurassic, but they are now known to be middle Callovian in age. The diet of Callovosaurus, like that of other iguanodontians, was plant material. It is one of the earliest known members of the iguanodontian lineage.
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Remes, however, concluded that merely a second partial skeleton, "Skeleton k", including also some skull elements, could be reliably referred, and a series of caudal vertebrae. The remains are from the later strata of the Tendaguru, the obere Dinosauriermergel or "Upper Dinosaur Marl", dating from the Tithonian. Tornieria was a large sauropod, with a maximum known femur length of suggesting an animal around the same size as Barosaurus; and 23 metric tons. It shared elongated neck vertebrae and a rather long forelimb with Barosaurus.
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Like in all spinosaurids, Siamosauruss teeth were conical, with reduced or absent serrations. This made them suitable for impaling rather than tearing flesh, a trait typically seen in largely piscivorous (fish-eating) animals. Spinosaurids are also known to have consumed pterosaurs and small dinosaurs, and there is fossil evidence of Siamosaurus itself feeding on sauropod dinosaurs, either via scavenging or active hunting. Siamosaurus' role as a partially piscivorous predator may have reduced the prominence of some contemporaneous crocodilians competing for the same food sources.
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Aegyptosaurus meaning 'Egypt’s lizard', for the country in which it was discovered (Greek sauros meaning 'lizard') is a genus of sauropod dinosaur believed to have lived in what is now Africa, around 95 million years ago, during the mid- and late-Cretaceous Period (Albian to Cenomanian stages). Like most sauropods, it had a long neck and a small skull. The animal's long tail probably acted as a counterweight to its body mass. Aegyptosaurus was a close relative of Argentinosaurus, a much larger dinosaur found in South America.
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Huene never assigned a holotype, but in 1979 José Fernando Bonaparte chose MLP 26-306 as the lectotype, a specimen consisting of a tibia and a fibula that perhaps originate from different individuals. Huene assigned those fossils to Laplatasaurus that seemed to indicate a rather large yet at the same time elegantly built sauropod. The about eighteen metres (60 ft) long Laplatasaurus was perhaps similar to Saltasaurus. Osteoderms forming an armored plating on the back, have been referred to Laplatasaurus but the association is uncertain.
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As for other therizinosaurids, it had a keratinous beak used when feeding, stocky feet with four weight-bearing toes and large flattened claws. Nanshiungosaurus is classified as a therizinosaurian dinosaur. Along with Therizinosaurus and Segnosaurus, Nanshiungosaurus was one of the earliest therizinosaurs to be described and named. The unusual shape of the pelvis led Dong—the original describer—to interpret the remains as belonging to some dwarf sauropod, but during the 1990s the genus was recognized as a segnosaur (now therizinosaur) based the pelvic similarities with Segnosaurus.
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Fauna of Hell Creek (Tyrannosaurus in dark brown) Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia. During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
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Rinconsauria was coined by Calvo et al. (2007) to include their new titanosaur Muyelensaurus and the previously described Rinconsaurus.J. O. Calvo, B. J. González Riga, and J. D. Porfiri. 2007. A new titanosaur sauropod from the Late Cretaceous of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina. Arquivos do Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro 65(4):485-504. Santucci and Arruda-Campos (2011) recovered Rinconsauria as part of Aeolosaurini, as did Franca et al. (2016) and Silva et al. (2019).Rodrigo M. Santucci and Antonio C. de Arruda-Campos (2011).
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The type and only species is Borealosaurus wimani, based on fragmentary remains from the Sunjiawan Formation of Liaoning. It has been estimated that this creature measured 12 metres in length, with a weight of 10 tonnes. The morphology of a mid-distal caudal vertebra was considered suggestive of a relationship with the Mongolian titanosaur Opisthocoelicaudia. However, in their overview of Cretaceous sauropod remains from Central Asia, Averianov and Sues considered Borealosaurus a non-lithostrotian titanosaur due to the lack of procoely in the middle caudal vertebrae.
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Contemporaneous dinosaurs included the microraptorine dromaeosaurid Graciliraptor; the oviraptorosaur Incisivosaurus; the ornithomimosaurs Shenzhousaurus and Hexing; the proceratosaurid tyrannosauroid Dilong; the titanosauriform sauropod Euhelopus; the ornithopod Jeholosaurus; and ceratopsians such as the ubiquitous Psittacosaurus as well as Liaoceratops. Mammals present included Acristatherium, Gobiconodon, Juchilestes, Maotherium, Meemannodon, and Repenomamus. Other tetrapods included the frogs Liaobatrachus and Mesophryne; and the lizard Dalinghosaurus. The Lujiatun Beds consist of fluvial and volcaniclastic deposits, indicating a landscape of rivers bearing volcanoes, which may have killed the preserved animals by lahar.
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On SV-POW web blog, sauropod researcher Matt Wedel used volumetric models, based on the published figures, that yielded estimates between , or even as low as approximately , based on a 20% shorter torso. Researcher Gregory S Paul posted a response to Lacovara et al., pointing out that the error margins using equations based on limb bones are large; using the same equation the Dreadnoughtus type specimen could have been anywhere between . Using volumetric techniques based on a more accurate skeletal restoration, Paul estimated as low as .
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"Balochisaurus" (meaning "Balochi lizard", for the Baloch tribes of Pakistan) is an informal taxon of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Pakistan. The proposed species is "B. malkani". The discovery was made (along with other dinosaur specimens) near Vitariki by a team of paleontologists from the Geological Survey of Pakistan. Described in 2006 by M.S. Malkani, the genus is based on seven tail vertebrae found in the Maastrichtian-age Vitakri Member of the Pab Formation, with additional vertebrae and a partial skull assigned to it.
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Arrangement of bones prior to preparation In 2001, a field crew from the Tate Museum supervised by William Wahl unexpectedly discovered the fossil in rocks of the Jimbo Quarry of the Morrison Formation, overlying the excavation site of Supersaurus vivianae, near Douglas, Wyoming. The stratigraphic position of the site was carefully documented by the collectors and detailed in Lovelace, 2006.Lovelace, D.M. (2006). "An Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation fire-induced debris flow: Taphonomy and paleoenvironment of a sauropod (Sauropoda: Supersaurus vivianae) locality, east-central Wyoming." pp.
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Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum When the site was first excavated, new species of turtles, crocodilians, pterosaurs, and early mammals were revealed. Many of these species showed the rudiments of characteristics that would later become their hallmarks. One of the first fossil skeletons exposed proved to be that of an unknown theropod, and revealed a stack of four more theropods buried below the first. Yang Zhongjian accompanied the first expedition to the Junggar Basin in 1928, and the fossils found included the medium-size sauropod Tienshanosaurus chitaiensis.
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The type species of Jainosaurus, J. septentrionalis has a long and complex taxonomic history closely connected to the history of the problematic genera Titanosaurus and Antarctosaurus. The first remains were between 1917 and 1920 found by Charles Alfred Matley near Jabalpur in the Lameta Formation. These were named Antarctosaurus septentrionalis by Friedrich von Huene and Matley in 1933.F. v. Huene and C. A. Matley, 1933, "The Cretaceous Saurischia and Ornithischia of the Central Provinces of India", Palaeontologica Indica (New Series), Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, 21(1): 1-74 In 1995 Adrian Paul Hunt et al., believing Antarctosaurus to belong to Dicraeosauridae, made the clearly titanosaurian Antarctosaurus septentrionalis the type species of a new genus, Jainosaurus, and determined that the braincase, GSI IM K27/497, should be the lectotype.Hunt, A.P., Lockley M., Lucas S. & Meyer C., 1995, "The global sauropod fossil record", In: M.G. Lockley, V.F. dos Santos, C.A. Meyer, and A.P. Hunt, (eds.) Aspects of sauropod paleobiology, GAIA 10: 261-279 Jainosaurus was further distinguished from Antarctosaurus by details of the braincase. In 2009, Jeffrey Wilson and others made a detailed reassessment of Jainosaurus septentrionalis and confirmed its validity.
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Restoration of a pair Rauhut and colleagues in 2005 noted that the tendency towards shorter- necks seen in dicraeosaurids, and most evident in Brachytrachelopan, runs counter to the lengthening of the neck seen in most sauropod lineages (brachiosaurids, titanosaurs, diplodocids, etc.) and indicates that this group of sauropods was "progressively adapting for low browsing and might have been specialized on specific food sources, as has been suggested for Amargasaurus and Dicraeosaurus." Moreover, the morphology of the cervical neural arches in Brachytrachelopan would have significantly restricted dorsal flexion of neck and most likely indicates that this sauropod was specialized to a diet of plants "growing at heights of between about 1 and 2 m." Rauhut and colleagues also suggested that diet may have been a limiting factor in body size among dicraeosaurids, and that this may have placed them in the same ecological niche as "large low-browsing iguanodontian ornithopods." Such large iguanodontians are absent from the Late Jurassic Gondwanan sediments that have produced all known fossils of dicraeosaurids, while they are abundant in similar ecosystems of the same age in North America, where dicraeosaurids are absent.
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Also found at the site were fish fragments, a theropod tooth, and a variety of plant fossils, including woody stems, branch impressions, cones and cone scales, and pieces of leaves. The Winton Formation had a faunal assemblage including bivalves, gastropods, insects, the lungfish Metaceratodus, turtles, the crocodilian Isisfordia, pterosaurs, and several types of dinosaurs, such as the theropod Australovenator, the sauropod Diamantinasaurus, and unnamed ankylosaurians and hypsilophodonts. Wintonotitan bones can be distinguished from Diamantinasaurus bones because Wintonotitan bones are not as robust. Plants known from the formation include ferns, ginkgoes, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.
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Diamantinasaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod from Australia that lived during the early Late Cretaceous, about 94 million years ago. The type species of the genus is D. matildae, first described and named in 2009 by Scott Hocknull and colleagues based on fossil finds in the Winton Formation. Meaning "Diamantina lizard", the name is derived from the location of the nearby Diamantina River and the Greek word sauros, "lizard". The specific epithet is from the Australian song Waltzing Matilda, also the locality of the holotype and paratype.
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Diplodocinae is an extinct subfamily of diplodocid sauropods that existed from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous of North America, Europe and South America, about 161.2 to 136.4 million years ago. Genera within the subfamily include Tornieria, Supersaurus, Leinkupal, Galeamopus, Diplodocus, KaatedocusE Tschopp, O Mateus 2013 The skull and neck of a new flagellicaudatan sauropod from the Morrison Formation and its implication for the evolution and ontogeny of diplodocid dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 11 (7), 853-888 and Barosaurus. Cladogram of the Diplodocidae after Tschopp, Mateus, and Benson (2015).
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The largest tracks are long with a pace of , and the smallest is long with a pace of . The tracks are tridactyl (three-toed) and have large and coarse digits, with prominent claw impressions. Impressions of the digits occupy most of the track-length, and one track has a thin heel. Though the tracks were found in a higher stratigraphic level than the main fossils of Giganotosaurus, they were from the same strata as the single tooth and some sauropod dinosaurs that are also known from the same strata as Giganotosaurus.
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The late 1960s also saw several new theories on the way dinosaurs behaved, often involving sophisticated social behaviour. On the basis of trackways, Bakker argued that sauropod dinosaurs moved in structured herds, with the adults surrounding the juveniles in a protective ring. However, shortly afterwards this particular interpretation was challenged by Ostrom among others, although the venerable dinosaur track expert Roland T. Bird apparently agreed with Bakker. The first rigorous study of dinosaur nesting behaviour came in the late 1970s, when palaeontologist Jack Horner showed that the duckbilled dinosaur Maiasaura cared for its young.
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The deposits from their east-facing drainage basins were carried by streams and rivers and deposited in swampy lowlands, lakes, river channels and floodplains. This formation is similar in age to the Solnhofen Limestone Formation in Germany and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. In 1877, this formation became the center of the Bone Wars, a fossil-collecting rivalry between early paleontologists Othniel Charles Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope. The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Barosaurus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus.
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Skull cast, Royal Ontario Museum, Canada. The discovery of Rapetosaurus, known by the single species Rapetosaurus krausei marked the first time a titanosaur had been recovered with an almost perfectly intact skeleton, complete with skull. It has helped to clarify some difficult, century-old classification issues, among this large group of sauropod dinosaurs and provides a good baseline for the reconstruction of other titanosaurs that are known only from partial fossilized remains. The discovery was published in 2001 by Kristina Curry Rogers and Catherine A. Forster in the scientific journal Nature.
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Size comparison Petrobrasaurus is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur. It is a titanosaur which lived during the upper Cretaceous period (Coniacian- Santonian age) in what is now Rincón de los Sauces, Patagonia, Argentina. It is known from the holotype MAU-Pv-PH-449 — a partial disarticulated skeleton recovered from the Plottier Formation (Neuquén Basin), Argentina. This genus was named by Leonardo S. Filippi, José Ignacio Canudo, Leonardo J. Salgado, Alberto C. Garrido, Rodolfo A. Garcia, Ignacio A. Cerda and Alejandro Otero in 2011, and the type species is Petrobrasaurus puestohernandezi.
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Cooley's sculptures have appeared on three National Geographic Magazine covers, including a dinosaur egg, the feathered dinosaur Caudipteryx and the head of a Tyrannosaurus rex. He has also produced a 70 foot tall sauropod and two babies for the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, the fleshed-out head of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex 'Sue' at the Field Museum of Natural History and a number of exhibits at the Royal Tyrrel Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. Cooley was the recipient of the John Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize for 3-dimensional art in 2005.
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The specific name is derived from Greek eo, meaning "dawn", and Latin collum, meaning "neck", in reference to Pulanesaura being a very basal sauropod not yet showing the most archetypal trait of more advanced sauropods - their very long necks. Pulanesaura was one of eighteen dinosaur taxa from 2015 to be described in open access or free-to-read journals. Pulanesaura is known from partial remains of at least two subadult to adult individuals. The holotype, BP/1/6982, represents the front dorsal vertebra missing the tip of the neural spine.
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The Brachiosauridae ("arm lizards", from Greek brachion (βραχίων) = "arm" and sauros = "lizard") are a family or clade of herbivorous, quadrupedal sauropod dinosaurs. Brachiosaurids had long necks that enabled them to access the leaves of tall trees that other sauropods would have been unable to reach. In addition, they possessed thick spoon-shaped teeth which helped them to consume tough plants more efficiently than other sauropods. They have also been characterized by a few unique traits or synapomorphies; dorsal vertebrae with 'rod-like' transverse processes and an ischium with an abbreviated pubic peduncle.
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In 1845, von Meyer created the group Pachypodes (a defunct junior synonym of Dinosauria) to include Plateosaurus, Iguanodon, Megalosaurus and Hylaeosaurus. Plateosauridae was proposed by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1895 within Theropoda. Later it was moved to "Prosauropoda" by von Huene, a placement that was accepted by most authors. Before the advent of cladistics in paleontology during the 1980s, with its emphasis on monophyletic groups (clades), Plateosauridae was defined loosely, as large, broad-footed, broad- handed forms with relatively heavy skulls, unlike the smaller "anchisaurids" and sauropod-like "melanorosaurids".
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Antarctosaurus (; meaning "southern lizard") is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now South America. The type species, Antarctosaurus wichmannianus, and a second species, Antarctosaurus giganteus, were described by prolific German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene in 1929. Three additional species of Antarctosaurus have been named since then but later studies have considered them dubious or unlikely to pertain to the genus. The type species, A. wichmannianus, is controversial because there is uncertainty as to whether all the described remains belong to the same individual or even genus.
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The museum also featured a Discovery Room and Activity Room, specifically designed for children, where designated specimens could be handled by visitors. Guided tours, and specially designed resources for disabled visitors, were also available. Specific exhibits included a sauropod fossil, "a collection of bird eggs including those of the ostrich and the long-billed vulture", and "stuffed animals including various big cats". Plans for future exhibitions, as of 2015, had included "climate change, global warming, combating desertification, tsunami, [and] depletion of [the] ozone layer" as well as "more digital displays ... [a]nd an IMAX theatre".
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It had a wide muzzle filled with more than 500 teeth, which were replaced at a rapid rate: around every 14 days. The jaws may have borne a keratinous sheath. Unlike other tetrapods, the tooth-bearing bones of its jaws were rotated transversely relative to the rest of the skull, so that all of its teeth were located far to the front. Nigersaurus and its closest relatives are grouped within the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (formerly thought to be grouped in the eponymous Nigersaurinae) of the family Rebbachisauridae, which is part of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea.
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Therefore, no intact skulls or articulated skeletons have been found, and these specimens represent the most complete known rebbachisaurid remains. Skeletal diagram showing known elements and size comparison Nigersaurus was named and described in more detail by Sereno and colleagues only in 1999, based on remains of newly found individuals. The same article also named Jobaria, another sauropod from Niger. The genus name Nigersaurus ("Niger reptile") is a reference to the country where it was discovered, and the specific name taqueti honours Taquet, who was the first to organise large-scale palaeontological expeditions to Niger.
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Contemporaries of Limusaurus in the Wucaiwan locality include the theropods Haplocheirus, Zuolong, Guanlong, Aorun, and Shishugounykus; the sauropod Mamenchisaurus; the ornithischians Gongbusaurus, Yinlong, and Hualianceratops; the cynodont Yuanotherium; the mammal Acuodulodon; the crocodyliform Nominosuchus and another unnamed crocodyliform found with the holotype specimen of Limusaurus; and the turtles Xinjiangchelys and Annemys. Small theropod dinosaurs are generally rare in the fossil record. According to Eberth and colleagues, the high incidence of Limusaurus indicates that the abundance of small theropods is underestimated elsewhere as these animals are generally less likely to fossilize.
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A detailed physical modelling-based analysis of sauropod rearing capabilities by Heinrich Mallison showed that while many sauropods could rear, the unusual body shape and limb length ratio of brachiosaurids made them exceptionally ill-suited for rearing. The forward position of its center of mass would have led to problems with stability, and required unreasonably large forces in the hips to obtain an upright posture. Brachiosaurus would also have gained only 33% more feeding height, compared to other sauropods, for which rearing may have tripled the feeding height.Mallison, H. (2011).
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Gallornis was a contemporary of many (non-avian) dinosaurs living around the (Second) Tethys Sea. In the archipelago that was then Europe, huge sauropods appear to have been the dominant herbivores.E.g. the camarasaurid Aragosaurus ischiaticus, the diplodocoid Histriasaurus boscarollii, the huge plesiomorphic Turiasauria, or the very peculiar and smallish (for a sauropod - some 15 meters or more) Xenoposeidon proneneukos Apart from some early birds, pterosaurs roamed the skies of the European microcontinents, (more abundant and diverse than the few bird species), while semi-aquatic crocodylomorphs (e.g. Goniopholis, Pholidosaurus, Vectisuchus) and marine thalattosuchians were common.
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Aepisaurus (; derived from the Greek: αἰπεινός, aipeinós - 'lofty/high' and σαυρος, sauros - 'lizard', i.e. "lofty lizard") was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Albian-age Lower Cretaceous Grès vert of Départment du Vaucluse, France, around 100 million years ago. It is an obscure genus from an unknown family, represented by a single humerus, now partly lost. Despite its lack of popularity, or perhaps because of it, it has been misspelled several ways in the scientific literature, with multiple dates given to the year of description as well.
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At the town of Glen Rose local residents guided him to carnivorous dinosaur tracks preserved along the Paluxy River. While he was cleaning mud from these footprints, he noticed another kind of footprint, apparently left by a long-necked sauropod dinosaur. In 1940, Bird resumed his Texas fieldwork with the help of paleontologists from the Survey and labor employed by the Works Progress Administration. Later, in 1940, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology collaborated with National Geographic on an expedition into the badlands of South Dakota.
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This represents the first formal naming of a sauropod species in North America. In late 1887 Othniel Charles Marsh sent John Bell Hatcher to look for dinosaur remains in the Arundel Clay. While on this expedition, Hatcher discovered an iron mine on a farm near Muirkirk owned by a man named William Coffin. This mine was nicknamed Swampoodle by the locals and became the best source of Early Cretaceous dinosaur fossils on the east coast of the US. Hatcher did most of his Maryland excavations during the winter, which was particularly harsh that year.
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The location of Washington, D.C. Paleontology in Washington, D.C., refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from Washington, D.C.. Local paleontology is known primarily for two serendipitously discovered dinosaur fossils. The first was a vertebra from a carnivorous dinosaur nicknamed "Capitalsaurus" that was related to Tyrannosaurus rex. "Capitalsaurus" is the official dinosaur of the District of Columbia; the place it was discovered was named Capitalsaurus Court in its honor and it even has its own local holiday. The second major fossil find was a thighbone from the long-necked sauropod Astrodon.
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Although Cope thought it was a sauropod, it was later shown to be a theropod. Gregory S. Paul reassessed the material as pertaining to a large species of Allosaurus in 1988 (which he classified as Allosaurus amplexus). Other authors have gone further and considered E. amplexus as simply a large individual of Allosaurus fragilis. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul and Kenneth Carpenter noted that the E. amplexus specimen comes from higher in the Morrison Formation than the type specimen of Allosaurus fragilis, and is therefore "probably a different taxon".
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A fossil snout referred to Spinosaurus was discovered with a vertebra from the sclerorhynchid Onchopristis embedded in it. In the Sao Khua Formation of Thailand, isolated tooth crowns from Siamosaurus have been found in association with sauropod remains, indicating possible predation or scavenging. A 2018 study by Auguste Hassler and colleagues of calcium isotopes in the teeth of North African theropods found that spinosaurids had a mixed diet of fish and herbivorous dinosaurs, whereas the other theropods examined (abelisaurids and carcharodontosaurids) mainly fed on herbivorous dinosaurs. This might indicate ecological partitioning between these theropods.
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A specimen first referred to Patagosaurus in 2003, MPEF-PV 1670 (which includes just a lower jaw), is also very similar to MACN CH 933, and differences can be associated with age, so therefore, MPEF-PV 1670 presumably represents adult cranial material. However, the teeth of MACN CH 934 are very different from those of both lower jaws (MACN CH 933 and MPEF-PV 1670), so it can be identified as another sauropod from the same deposit as Patagosaurus. Thus, the taxon only certainly includes PVL 4170, MACN CH 933, and MPEF-PV 1670.
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Hypsibema crassicauda, over fifty feet long, was one of the largest eastern hadrosaurs, outgrowing some of more derived western hadrosaurs like Lambeosaurus and Saurolophus. The genus likely took the environmental niche occupied by large sauropods in other areas, possibly grown to colossal sizes to that of Magnapaulia and Shantungosaurus. Hypsibema missouriensis, was another large species of hadrosaur, but it grew up to 45 to 49 feet, which wasn't as large as Hypsibema crassicauda. When it was first discovered in 1945, it was mistaken for a species of sauropod.
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The Morrison Basin stretched from New Mexico to Alberta and Saskatchewan, and was formed when the precursors to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains started pushing up to the west. The deposits from their east-facing drainage basins were carried by streams and rivers and deposited in swampy lowlands, lakes, river channels, and floodplains. This formation is similar in age to the Lourinhã Formation in Portugal and the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania. Skeletons of C. nasicornis and Dryosaurus, Carnegie Museum The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs.
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The lower front of the radius is lightly concave between outer and inner ridges. A unique combination is present of a robust ulna, its upper surface having a width equalling more than 40% of the shaft length, with a slender radius having an upper width of less than 30% of total length. A rock associated with the forelimb, NHMUK R1868, was the first specimen known preserving parts of the sauropod skin. These probably are not impressions as the visible surface of the scales is convex, but natural casts.
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Though the first two seasons' opening credits of the original Flintstones series stated the town's population as only 2,500 people (though it did swell to 30,000 in a dream sequence in the sixth-season episode entitled "Rip Van Flintstone"), Bedrock was generally presented as a medium-sized American city, with all the amenities of such, but with a "prehistoric" twist. For instance, sauropod dinosaurs were seen being used as cranes at the town's most well-known employer, "Slate Rock and Gravel" (also known as "Rockhead and Quarry Cave Construction Company" in the series' earlier episodes).
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It came from a bonebed in the Bighorn Basin of north-central Wyoming, and was found near the shoulder blade of a Sauroposeidon. An assortment of other fragmentary theropod remains from the formation may also belong to Acrocanthosaurus, which may be the only large theropod in the Cloverly Formation. Acrocanthosaurus may be known from less complete remains outside of Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming. A tooth from southern Arizona has been referred to the genus, and matching tooth marks have been found in sauropod bones from the same area.
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Once the prey was trapped against the body, Acrocanthosaurus may have dispatched it with its jaws. Another possibility is that Acrocanthosaurus held its prey in its jaws, while repeatedly retracting its forelimbs, tearing large gashes with its claws. Other less probable theories have suggested the forelimb range of motion being able to grasp onto the side of a sauropod and clinging on to topple the sauropods of smaller stature, though this is unlikely due to Acrocanthosaurus having a rather robust leg structure compared to other similarly structured theropods.
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However, the specimens were being damaged due to bulldozers in the area and there would be little chance of closing the area as the state had invested millions of yuan in the site already. It was not until 1985 that the government finally agreed to close the construction on the site, and by then Dong and his team had already excavated over 100 dinosaurs from the area, including several rare sauropod skulls. A dinosaur found in the Shaximiao Formation, Dashanpusaurus dongi, was named in tribute of both Dashanpu and Dong Zhiming.
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A more detailed description was announced, noting that excavation was still in progress while the paper was published. In 2000, a second short description was published by Luo Yaonan and Wang Changsheng, also presenting Gongxianosaurus as a new sauropod and without mentioning the first description that was published two years before. Also, much of the information published by Luo and Wang was already published by He and colleagues. Luo and Wang suggest that several bones may do not pertain to the type species Gongxianosaurus shibeiensis but to a second species of Gongxianosaurus.
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A relatively large sauropod measuring approximately long, with half of the length being its neck, Klamelisaurus can be distinguished from its relatives by characteristics of the and . Phylogenetic analyses have suggested that Klamelisaurus belonged to the Mamenchisauridae, a group of Middle to Late Jurassic and primarily Chinese sauropods, although its close relatives also include a mamenchisaurid from Thailand. While paleontologist Gregory S. Paul suggested that Bellusaurus, known only from juvenile specimens, was a juvenile Klamelisaurus, this proposal has been rejected based on anatomical evidence, and the fact that Bellusaurus was geologically younger.
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Abydosaurus is one of the few sauropods known from skull material, with the first described complete skull for a Cretaceous sauropod from the Americas. It is also notable for its narrow teeth, as earlier brachiosaurids had broader teeth. Abydosaurus is based on DINO 16488, a nearly complete skull and lower jaws with the first four neck vertebrae. Abundant skull and postcranial bones were found at the same site, including partial skulls from three additional individuals, a partial hip and associated tail vertebrae, a shoulder blade, an upper arm bone, and hand bones.
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Abydosaurus was named in 2010 by Daniel Chure and colleagues. The genus name is a reference to Egyptian mythology: Abydos is the Greek name for a city on the Nile where the head and neck of Osiris were buried, while the holotype of Abydosaurus consists of a head and neck found in rocks overlooking the Green River. The type species is A. mcintoshi in honor of John S. ("Jack") McIntosh, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Wesleyan University, and his contributions to Dinosaur National Monument and the study of sauropod dinosaurs.
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Mendozasaurus is a genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur. It was a member of Titanosauria, which were massive sauropods that were common on the southern landmasses during the Cretaceous It is represented by several partial skeletons from a single locality within the Coniacian (lower Upper Cretaceous) Sierra Barrosa Formation in the south of Mendoza Province, northern Neuquén Basin, Argentina. The type species, Mendozasaurus neguyelap, was described by Argentine paleontologist Bernardo Javier González Riga in 2003. Mendozasaurus is the first dinosaur named from Mendoza Province, Argentina, for which it was named.
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This crest points forward and is fairly elongated, extending down about a third the length of the bone. Overall, the humerus of aphanosaurs closely resemble that of sauropod dinosaurs and Nyasasaurus, an indeterminate early dinosaur or dinosaur relative. The arm as a whole was robustly-built and somewhat shorter than the leg, but only the humerus possessed unique features. The hand is mostly unknown in members of this group, but it was presumably small and five- fingered as in most archosaurs (apart from specialized forms like pterosaurs or theropod dinosaurs).
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Gannansaurus (meaning "Gannan lizard") is an extinct genus of somphospondylan sauropod dinosaur known from the late Late Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation of Ganzhou Basin, Jiangxi Province of southern China. It is known from specimen GMNH F10001 which consists of a single, nearly complete dorsal vertebra and a mid-caudal vertebra. Gannansaurus was first named by Lü Junchang, Yi Laiping, Zhong Hui and Wei Xuefang in 2013 and the type species is Gannansaurus sinensis. Gannansaurus shares some characters with Euhelopus, indicating that it is more closely related to it rather than to other titanosauriforms.
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These animals were chosen as they span a wide range in internal body temperatures, allowing for the creation of a mathematical framework relating Δ47 of bioapatite and internal body temperature. This relationship has been applied to analyses of fossil teeth, in order to predict the body temperatures of a woolly mammoth and a sauropod dinosaur. The latest Δ47 temperature calibration for (bio)apatite of Löffler et al. 2019 covers a wide temperature range of 1 to 80 °C and was applied to a fossil Megalodon shark tooth for calculating seawater temperatures and δ18O values.
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Serving the purpose of weight-saving, as seen in other sauropods, many of the vertebrae were hollowed out, or "pneumatic"; that is, the vertebrae were riddled with passages and cavities for an intricate system of air sacs connected to the lungs. This feature was little understood at the time Camarasaurus was discovered, but its structure was the inspiration for the creature's name, meaning "chambered lizard". The neck and counterbalancing tail were shorter than usual for a sauropod of this size. Camarasaurus, like certain other sauropods, had an enlargement of the spinal cord near the hips.
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Chuxiongosaurus (meaning "Chuxiong lizard") is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic Period. Fossils of this genus have been found in the Lower Lufeng Formation, Yunnan Province, southern China. Identified from the holotype CMY LT9401 a nearly complete skull (including a lower jaw) with some similarities to Thecodontosaurus, it was described as the "first basal sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of China," more basal than Anchisaurus. It was named by Lü Junchang, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Li Tianguang and Zhong Shimin in 2010, and the type species is Chuxiongosaurus lufengensis.
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Histriasaurus (HIS-tree-ah-SAWR-us) (meaning "Istria lizard") was a genus of dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous (Hauterivian to Barremian stages, around 130 million years ago). Its fossils, holotype WN V-6, were found a bonebed in lacustarine limestone exposed on the seafloor off the coast of the town of Bale on the Istrian peninsula in Croatia, and described in 1998 by Dalla Vecchia. It was a diplodocoid sauropod, related to, but more primitive than, Rebbachisaurus. Phylogenetic analyses published in 2007 and 2011 placed Histriasaurus as the most basal member of Rebbachisauridae.
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It is internationally important for its wintering and breeding waterfowl and waders, such as teal, pintail and wigeon. The smallest is Delph Bridge Drain at , a short stretch of ditch which was designated because it was found to have a population of fen ragwort, which was believed to have been extinct in Britain since 1857. The only site designated for both biological and geological interests is Ely Pits and Meadows, which has nationally important numbers of bitterns, and has yielded sauropod dinosaurs and pliosaur marine reptiles dating to the Jurassic period.
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The Australia-New Zealand continental fragment of Gondwana split from the rest of Gondwana in the late Cretaceous time (95–90 Ma). Then around 83 Ma, Zealandia started to separate from Australia forming the Tasman Sea, initially separating from the south. By 75 Ma, Zealandia was essentially separate from Australia and Antarctica, although only shallow seas might have separated Zealandia and Australia in the north. Dinosaurs continued to live in New Zealand after it separated from Gondwana, as shown by sauropod footprints from 70 million years ago in Nelson.
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Like all sauropods, Rinconsaurus was a large long-necked quadrupedal animal, with a long, whip-like tail and four pillar-like legs. Rinconsaurus was an unusually slender sauropod. Although fossil discoveries are incomplete, and no complete necks or heads have been found, fully grown Rinconsaurus are estimated to have been 11 meters (36 ft) long and approximately 2.5 meters (8 ft) high at the shoulder. Though only a portion of one skull has been recovered, Rinconsaurus may have had a long, narrow skull, based on fossil evidence of the skulls of related titanosaurs.
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Geological evidence suggests that Deinonychus inhabited a floodplain or swamplike habitat. The paleoenvironment of both the upper Cloverly Formation and the Antlers Formation, in which remains of Deinonychus have been found, consisted of tropical or sub-tropical forests, deltas and lagoons, not unlike today's Louisiana. Other animals Deinonychus shared its world with include herbivorous dinosaurs such as the armored Sauropelta and the ornithopods Zephyrosaurus and Tenontosaurus. In Oklahoma, the ecosystem of Deinonychus also included the large theropod Acrocanthosaurus, the huge sauropod Sauroposeidon, the crocodilians Goniopholis and Paluxysuchus, and the gar Lepisosteus.
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Dorsal vertebra Of the four vertebrae preserved in the holotype, the largest is the dorsal vertebra (thought to be a second dorsal vertebra), measuring tall and wide. This is the broadest sauropod vertebra known, and two-thirds of its width is made up of the huge (structures projecting from the side of the vertebra), which are heavily expanded and have very deep bases, forming wing-like structures when viewed from the front. In other titanosaurs, such as Dreadnoughtus, they are far less wide and deep. In Puertasaurus, these processes are perpendicular to the axial plane.
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Titanosauria have the largest range of body size of any sauropod clade, and includes both the largest known sauropods and some of the smallest. One of the largest titanosaurs, Patagotitan, had a body mass estimated to be , whereas one of the smallest, Magyarosaurus, had a body mass of approximately . Even relatively closely related titanosaurs could be very different body sizes, as the small rinconsaurs were closely related to the gigantic lognkosaurs. The smallest titanosaurs, such as Magyarosaurus, inhabited Europe, which was largely made up of islands during the Cretaceous, and were likely island dwarfs.
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For example, the metatarsals included in the syntype series of Acanthopholis platypus are from a sauropod, but the remaining syntypes are not. The holotype of Macrurosaurus, SM B55630, consists of two series of caudal vertebrae found around 1864 near Cambridge, England in the Cambridge Greensand, strata themselves deposited during the Cenomanian but containing reworked fossil material dating perhaps from around the late Albian. The first was acquired by the Woodwardian Museum from William Farren who had it dug up at Coldhams Common near Barnwell. This series is made up of 25 proximal vertebrae.
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A sauropod-like neck, with no head, extends about as high as the bandersnatch's body. The tip is thick and rounded, entirely featureless, other than two tufts of black bristles (sense organs). At the front of the body, low to the ground, is a large mouth adapted to scooping a form of mutated yeast out of shallow ocean-like yeast colonies. Niven's works describe Bandersnatchi as one giant cell with long chromosomes as thick as a human finger, rendering them impervious to the mutagenitive effects of radiation and therefore unable to mutate.
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145-139 million years ago) in the early Cretaceous. It was formerly the type section for the Portland (Tithonian) and Purbeck (Berriasian) Groups in the Aylesbury area; it has yielded an important sequence of ostracod fauna which spans the junction between the two stages, and the environmental change from land to sea. A number of dinosaur teeth have been found, including Pelorosaurus teeth which are the only sauropod teeth of Tithonian age in Europe. Teeth found of the carnosaur Megalosaurus are the only ones found of the same period in Britain.
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It was a bulky quadruped that unlike other early archosauromorphs had a relatively short tail and robust limbs that were held in an odd mix of sprawled hind limbs and raised forelimbs. It had a long neck and a proportionately small head with remarkably sauropod-like jaws and teeth. Azendohsaurus used to be classified as a herbivorous dinosaur, at first as an ornithischian but more often as a "prosauropod" sauropodomorph. This was based only on its jaws and teeth, which share derived features typically found in herbivorous dinosaurs.
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Baryonyx was the first theropod dinosaur demonstrated to have been piscivorous (fish-eating), as evidenced by fish scales in the stomach region of the holotype specimen. It may also have been an active predator of larger prey and a scavenger, since it also contained bones of a juvenile iguanodontid. The creature would have caught and processed its prey primarily with its forelimbs and large claws. Baryonyx may have had semiaquatic habits, and coexisted with other theropod, ornithopod, and sauropod dinosaurs, as well as pterosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and fishes, in a fluvial environment.
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Although a very early and unspecialized sauropod, Barapasaurus shows the building plan typical for later, more derived sauropods: the cervical vertebrae were elongated, resulting in a long neck. The trunk was short and holds columnar limbs which indicate an obligate quadrupedal posture. Even the size, which is estimated at approximately 14 meters, is comparable with that of later sauropods. The vertebral column already shows many traits that are typical for later sauropods which allowed them to attain great body sizes, although in later sauropods these traits are much more developed.
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Additionally, Nopcsa's conclusion that at least some Mesozoic era reptiles were warm-blooded is now shared by much of the scientific community. Vertebra of Nopcsaspondylus, a sauropod dinosaur named after the baron in 2007. Other extinct animals named after him include Elopteryx nopcsai, Tethysaurus nopcsai, Hyposaurus nopcsai, and Mesophis nopcsai Nopcsa studied Transylvanian dinosaurs intensively, even though they were smaller than their "cousins" elsewhere in the world. For example, he unearthed six-meter-long sauropods, a group of dinosaurs which elsewhere commonly grew to 30 meters or more, which he named Magyarosaurus.
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Marmarospondylus ("marble [reference to the Forest Marble Formation] vertebra") is a dubious genus of sauropod dinosaur from Middle Jurassic deposits in the English Midlands. The type species, Marmarospondylus robustus, was described by Richard Owen as a species of the Late Jurassic genus Bothriospondylus in 1875.Owen, R., 1875, "A monograph on the Fossil Reptilia of the Mesozoic Formations. Monograph on the Genus Bothriospondylus", Palaeontographical Society, 29: 15-26 The holotype, NHMUK R.22428, a dorsal, was found in the Bathonian-age Forest Marble Formation at Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire.
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Numerous theropods are known from the Violante Farm fossil site, including Gualicho and Aoniraptor (which may or may not represent the same megaraptoran); the carcharodontosaurid Taurovenator; a coelurosaur (identified by Cerroni and colleagues as an unenlagiine) and another carcharodontosaurid that remain unnamed, but are likely distinct species; and another indeterminate megaraptoran. Other dinosaurs also include a titanosaurian sauropod and an ornithopod. Additional vertebrates from the Violante Farm site include the eilenodontid rhynchocephalian Patagosphenos; a crocodyliform, possibly belonging to the Neosuchia; a squamate; a chelid turtle; and a fish referred to Lepidotes.
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H. priscus sacrum Specmen FHPR 1106 Haplocanthosaurus priscus was originally named Haplocanthus priscus by John Bell Hatcher in 1903. Soon after his original description, Hatcher came to believe the name Haplocanthus had already been used for a genus of acanthodian fish (Haplacanthus, named by Louis Agassiz in 1845), and was thus preoccupied. Hatcher re-classified his sauropod later in 1903, giving it the new name Haplocanthosaurus. However, the name was not technically preoccupied at all, since there was a variation in spelling: the fish was named Haplacanthus, not Haplocanthus.
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Michael P. Taylor (born 12 March 1968) is a British computer programmer with a Ph.D in palaeontology. To date, he has published 18 paleontological papers and is co-credited with naming three genera of dinosaur (Xenoposeidon in 2007 with Darren Naish, Brontomerus in 2011 with Matt J. Wedel and Richard Cifeli, and Haestasaurus in 2015 with Paul Upchurch and Phil Mannion). Along with paleontologists Darren Naish and Matt Wedel, he founded the paleontology blog Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week, where he blogs as Mike Taylor. He lives in Ruardean, Gloucestershire, England.
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BMNH R28633, one of nine caudal vertebrae in 1853 referred by Owen to P. conybeari Pelorosaurus was the first sauropod to be identified as a dinosaur, although it was not the first to be discovered. Richard Owen had discovered Cetiosaurus in 1841 but had incorrectly identified it as a gigantic sea-going crocodile-like reptile. Mantell identified Pelorosaurus as a dinosaur, living on land. The taxonomic history of Pelorosaurus and Cetiosaurus, as noted by reviewers including Michael P. Taylor and Darren Naish, is highly confusing. In 1842, Richard Owen named several species of Cetiosaurus.
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Noticing Owen's mistake in assigning iguanodont bones to Cetiosaurus, comparative anatomist Alexander Melville renamed the sauropod bones Cetiosaurus conybeari in 1849. In 1850, Gideon Mantell decided that C. conybeari was so different from Cetiosaurus that it needed a new genus, so he reclassified it under the new name Pelorosaurus conybeari. Mantell had originally, in November 1849, intended to use the name "Colossosaurus", but upon discovering that kolossos was Greek for "statue" and not "giant", he changed his mind. The generic name is derived from the Greek pelor, "monster".
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The Paleontological section of the museum as seen from the campus of the Evolutionary Biology Centre. The paleontological section of the museum holds many mesozoic fossils of marine reptiles, such as the ichthyosaur Ophthalmosaurus and the mosasaur Platecarpus. There are several original fossils of pterosaurs and dinosaurs. These include a unique specimen of the chinese sauropod Euhelopus zdanskyi and a cast of the Berlin specimen of Archaeopteryx lithographica, as well as the ceratopsid dinosaur Pentaceratops sternbergi and a skull of the hadrosaurid Parasaurolophus tubicen, the two latter genera both named by Wiman.
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Daanosaurus (meaning "Da'an lizard" after Da'an district in Zigong, Sichuan) was a genus of dinosaur. It was a brachiosaurid sauropod which lived during the Late Jurassic (Oxfordian - Tithonian stage, about 163 - 145 mya). It lived in what is now China (Sichuan Province), and was similar to Bellusaurus.Brachiosauridae at Mikko's Phylogeny Archive When it was described, Daanosaurus was placed in the Bellusaurinae, a sub-family of Brachiosauridae that Dong Zhiming had raised in 1990 to house Bellusaurus, or the Klamelisauridae (also now merged with Brachiosauridae), used to house Klamelisaurus, possibly Dannosaurus and Abrosaurus.
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The adult specimen is thought to have weighed around six tonnes, and probably measured around 14 meters (46 ft) in length. The juvenile specimen had about a third of this length, and probably weighed around 200 kilograms and measured 4.5 meters (15 ft) in length. Its assignment to a new species is based on several noteworthy autapomorphies, including an oddly-shaped hipbone which would have permitted the attachment of unusually massive leg muscles. This unique ilium would have given it the largest leg muscles of any sauropod dinosaur.
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However, none were found after they examined a large number of sauropod skeletons. Barosaurus lentus, depicted in a rearing tripodal stance Heinrich Mallison (in 2009) was the first to study the physical potential for various sauropods to rear into a tripodal stance. Mallison found that some characters previously linked to rearing adaptations were actually unrelated (such as the wide-set hip bones of titanosaurs) or would have hindered rearing. For example, titanosaurs had an unusually flexible backbone, which would have decreased stability in a tripodal posture and would have put more strain on the muscles.
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A 2004 study by Day and colleagues found that a general pattern could be found among groups of advanced sauropods, with each sauropod family being characterised by certain trackway gauges. They found that most sauropods other than titanosaurs had narrow-gauge limbs, with strong impressions of the large thumb claw on the forefeet. Medium gauge trackways with claw impressions on the forefeet probably belong to brachiosaurids and other primitive titanosauriformes, which were evolving wider-set limbs but retained their claws. Primitive true titanosaurs also retained their forefoot claw but had evolved fully wide gauge limbs.
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The 2006 publication, however, established that the majority of specimens were adult, and that Europasaurus was an island dwarf. The number of individual sauropod bones had increased to 650 and include variously articulated individuals; the material was found within an area of squared. From these specimens, the holotype was selected, a disarticulated but associated individual (DFMMh/FV 291). The holotype includes multiple cranial bones (premaxilla, maxilla and quadratojugal), a partial braincase, multiple mandible bones (dentary, surangular and angular), large amounts of teeth, cervical vertebrae, sacral vertebrae and ribs from the neck and torso.
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They are similar in shape to those of Giraffatitan and Camarasaurus, and have well developed articular surfaces. A single shaft is present for a majority of the quadrates length, with a pterygoid wing along the medial side. Pterygoids are the largest of the sauropod palate bones, and it has a triradiate shape, like the postorbitals. An anterior projection contacts the opposite pterygoid, while a lateral wing contacts the ectopterygoid, and a posterior wing supports the quadrate and basipterygoid (a bone that provides connection between the palate and the braincase).
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Notes on the paleontology of the Potomac Formation. The Johns Hopkins University Circulars 15(121):17–20 The plant life known from this area included trees preserved as silicified wood, cycads like Dioonites, Ginkgo, the ground plant Selaginella and the giant redwood conifer Sequoia. In prehistoric Oklahoma, Astrodon lived alongside other dinosaurs, such as the sauropod Sauroposeidon proteles, the dromaeosaurid Deinonychus and the carnosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis.Weishampel, David B.; Barrett, Paul M.; Coria, Rodolfo A.; Le Loeuff, Jean; Xu Xing; Zhao Xijin; Sahni, Ashok; Gomani, Elizabeth, M.P.; and Noto, Christopher R. (2004).
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Tendaguria was a large sauropod from the Tendaguru fossil locality. Its length is estimated at about twenty meters (sixty-six feet). The vertebrae are opisthocoelous (convex at the front, hollow behind) and differ from other known sauropods in their very low, almost non-existent neural spines, which are not distinct bodies of bone, do not rise above the surrounding area of the neural arch and are continuous at their rear with the transverse processes, including the epipophyses. Viewed from above, the spines have the form of a low and broad transverse ridge.
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The Javelina Formation is a geological formation in Texas. Dating has shown that the strata date to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous, approximately 70 to 66.5 million years old. The middle part of the formation has been dated to about 69 million years ago plus or minus 1 Ma and the top situated near the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (in the overlying Black Peaks FormationWoodward, H. N. (2005). Bone histology of the sauropod dinosaur Alamosaurus sanjuanensis from the Javelina Formation, Big Bend National Park, Texas.), dated to 66 Ma ago.
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Specimens have been found in the North-Pyrenean site of Bellevue, which is located at the base of the Marnes de la Maurine member of the Marnes Rouges Inférieures Formation. Marine biostratagraphic testing of the formation places its age somewhere between Late Campanian to Early Maastrichtian. Other contemporary dinosaurs in the Bellevue layer include the titanosaur sauropod Ampelosaurus, the rhabdodontid Rhabdodon and indeterminate ankylosaur and Dromaeosauridae elements. Other material ascribed to Lirainosaurus have been found in the Fox-Amphoux–Métisson locality, where unfortunately no magnetostratigraphic dating has been performed.
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Australovenator is based on a theropod specimen (AODF 604), affectionately nicknamed "Banjo" after Banjo Paterson, which was found intermingled with the remains of the sauropod Diamantinasaurus matildae at the "Matilda site" (AODL 85). The parts of the holotype as it was initially described, which are held at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History, consists of a left dentary, teeth, partial forelimbs and hindlimbs, a partial right ilium, ribs, and gastralia. Australovenator was described in 2009 by paleontologist Scott Hocknull of the Queensland Museum, and colleagues. The type species is A. wintonensis, in reference to nearby Winton.
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As is typical for a sauropod, the head of the femur is slightly above the greater trochanter, and there is a mild trochanteric shelf. A moderate lateral bulge is present, above which the femur is shifted medially, like most macronarians except Opisthocoelicaudia, Saltasaurus and Rapetosaurus. The condyles for articulation with the tibia and fibula extend high onto the posterior surface of the femur, but unlike Neuquensaurus and Opisthocoelicaudia do not extend onto the anterior surface. A depression subdivides the fibular condyle, which bears a slight ridge also found in Magyarosaurus and other titanosaurs, although the prominence of it is unique to Diamantinasaurus.
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Longosuchus meadei (an aetosaur), Gavialis gangeticus, (a crocodilian), Saurosuchus galilei (a loricatan), Pedeticosaurus leviseuri (a sphenosuchian), Chenanisuchus lateroculi (a dyrosaurid), and Dakosaurus maximus (a thalattosuchian). Tupuxuara leonardi (a pterosaur), Alamosaurus sanjuanensis, (a sauropod), Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus (an ornithopod), Daspletosaurus torosus (a tyrannosaurid), Pentaceratops sternbergii (a ceratopsian), and Grus grus (a neornithian). Since the 1970s, scientists have classified archosaurs mainly on the basis of their ankles.Archosauromorpha: Archosauria - Palaeos The earliest archosaurs had "primitive mesotarsal" ankles: the astragalus and calcaneum were fixed to the tibia and fibula by sutures and the joint bent about the contact between these bones and the foot.
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Mierasaurus is an extinct genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Utah, United States. The taxon was first described and named in 2017 by Rafael Royo-Torres and colleagues, from a mostly complete skeleton including a disarticulated partial skull and mandible, teeth, multiple vertebrae from along the length of the body, both scapulae, radius and ulna bones, a left manus, a complete pelvis, both femora and the entire left hindlimb. Additionally, they also referred a lower jaw and femur from juvenile individuals, which were found nearby, to the genus. Collectively, Mierasaurus is among the most completely known North American sauropods.
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Cranial material of Mierasaurus The skull of Mierasaurus is overall similar to those of other turiasaurs, which have rounded snouts with retracted nostril openings. The lower jaw of Mierasaurus becomes increasingly taller towards the front, which is like Camarasaurus but unlike the basal sauropod Jobaria. A sharp ridge extends across the bottom edge of the front of the lower jaw, seen in both dicraeosaurids and diplodocids, and to some extent Camarasaurus. The lower jaw bears thirteen teeth; the ones at the front are spatula-shaped while the ones at the rear are heart-shaped, which is a distinguishing characteristic of turiasaurs.
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Sallam led a team of Egyptian and American paleontologists in describing the specimen, which was announced as belonging to a new species of sauropod, Mansourasaurus shahinae, in January 2018. The holotype specimen of Mansourasaurus is the most complete fossil of a terrestrial animal from the post-Cenomanian Cretaceous in mainland Africa, a period of nearly 30 million years which otherwise has a poorly-known fossil record in Africa. Mansourasaurus is closely related to European species, providing evidence that Africa was not entirely geographically isolated during the Late Cretaceous. The discovery attracted considerable media attention and has helped popularize paleontology in Egypt.
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Deltapodus is an ichnogenus of footprint produced by a stegosaurian dinosaur According to the main Stegosauria article: :"Purported stegosaurian dermal plate was reported from the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Kallamedu Formation (southern India); however, Galton & Ayyasami (2017) interpreted the specimen as a bone of a sauropod dinosaur. Nevertheless, the authors considered the survival of stegosaurians into the Maastrichtian to be possible, noting the presence of the stegosaurian ichnotaxon Deltapodus in the Maastrichtian Lameta Formation (western India).". It is known from the Lourinhã Formation of Portugal, Spain, China, Morocco and United Kingdom. Deltapodus includes three ichnospecies: D. ibericus, D. curriei, and D. brodricki.
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