''Bellusaurus'' (meaning "Beautiful lizard", from
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
''bellus'' 'beautiful' (
masculine
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors con ...
form) and
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
''sauros'' 'lizard') was a small short-necked
sauropod
Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their bo ...
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
from the Middle
Jurassic
The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...
which measured about long. Its fossils were found in
Shishugou Formation
The Shishugou Formation () is a geological formation in Xinjiang, China.
Its strata date back to the Late Jurassic period. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Din ...
rocks in the northeastern
Junggar
Dzungaria (; from the Mongolian words , meaning 'left hand') is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang. It is thus also known as Beijiang, which means "Northern Xinjiang". Bounded by the A ...
Basin in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
Discovery and naming
The
type and only known species is ''Bellusaurus sui'', formally described by
Dong Zhiming
Dong Zhiming (Chinese: 董枝明, Pinyin: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; born January 1937) is a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist formerly employed at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. He began working at the ...
in 1991. The remains of ''Bellusaurus'' were found in the
Shishugou Formation
The Shishugou Formation () is a geological formation in Xinjiang, China.
Its strata date back to the Late Jurassic period. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Din ...
in the northeastern
Junggar
Dzungaria (; from the Mongolian words , meaning 'left hand') is a geographical subregion in Northwest China that corresponds to the northern half of Xinjiang. It is thus also known as Beijiang, which means "Northern Xinjiang". Bounded by the A ...
Basin in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. Seventeen individuals were found in a single quarry, suggesting that a herd had been killed in a flash flood. Some features suggest they may have all been juveniles.
''Bellusaurus sui'' was derived from the Latin ''bellus'' meaning small, delicate, and beautiful, as these sauropods were small and lightly built. The specific name, ''sui'', was named in honor of Senior Preparator Youling Sui, a notable restorer of dinosaurs remains. ''Bellusaurus'' was the last restoration undertaken by Mr. Sui.
[
]
Description
It is unknown if the material representing ''Bellusaurus'' is from juvenile specimens. Juvenile characteristics of dinosaurs have been noted by Galton in 1982 of stegosaur growth, whose study would suggest that the group of small ''Bellusaurus'' sauropods were juveniles that were subjected to a single catastrophe resulting in the mass death assemblage seen from this discovery. Because of the uncertainty of the specimens age, it could be difficult to place the species into a specific taxonomic assignment due to having unstable morphological characteristics.[
]
References
External links
''Bellusaurus''
in the Dino Directory
Macronarians
Middle Jurassic dinosaurs of Asia
Jurassic China
Fossils of China
Paleontology in Xinjiang
Fossil taxa described in 1990
Taxa named by Dong Zhiming
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