''Jiangshanosaurus'' is a genus of herbivorous

titanosauriform Macronaria is a clade of sauropod dinosaurs. Macronarians are named after the large diameter of the nasal opening of their skull, known as the external naris, which exceeded the size of the orbit, the skull opening where the eye is located (hence ...

sauropod

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 ...

that lived in China approximately 92-88

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago) ...

, during the

Turonian The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded b ...

- Coniacian stage of the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

Discovery and naming

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 Jiangshan () is a county-level city located in Quzhou prefecture-level city, in the southwest of Zhejiang Province, China, bordering Jiangxi province to the west. Located about 250 kilometers southwest of Hangzhou, the provincial capital, it is ...

county, in the eastern

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

province of

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...

. The type and only named species, ''Jiangshanosaurus lixianensis'', was formally described by Tang Feng, Kang, Jin Xingsheng, Wei and Wu in 2001. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

, ZNM M1322, of ''J.lixianensis'' includes elements of the left shoulder, five back vertebrae, three tail vertebrae, the

pubic bone In vertebrates, the pubic region ( la, pubis) is the most forward-facing ( ventral and anterior) of the three main regions making up the coxal bone. The left and right pubic regions are each made up of three sections, a superior ramus, inferior ...

s, 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.'' Bd. 39, Nr. 4, pp. 272–281. The genus name refers to Jiangshan County; the specific name refers to the village of Lixian. In 2019, Philip Mannion e.a. redescribed the holotype.Philip D. Mannion; Paul Upchurch; Xingsheng Jin; Wenjie Zheng. 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): Article ID 191057

Description

Size

According to paleontologist Thomas R. Holtz Jr. the exact size of this sauropod cannot be determined.

Gregory S. Paul Gregory Scott Paul (born December 24, 1954) is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dino ...

estimated its length at eleven meters and its weight at 2500 kg.

Distinguishing traits

In 2019, Mannion e.a. indicated two distinguishing traits. They were

autapomorphies In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

, unique derived characters. In the vertebrae positioned at the transition between the tail base and the middle tail, the lower ends of the ''laminae spinoprezygapophyseales'', the ridges running from the

neural spine The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

towards the front articulation processes, are placed to the inside of these processes, the prezygapophyses, instead of touching them. The lower shaft of the ischium ends in a small process, formed as a hook, on its top outer side.

Phylogeny

Although ''Jiangshanosaurus'' initially defied precise placement within

Titanosauria Titanosaurs (or titanosaurians; members of the group Titanosauria) were a diverse group of sauropod dinosaurs, including genera from all seven continents. The titanosaurs were the last surviving group of long-necked sauropods, with taxa still thr ...

, in 2017 paper considered it to be outside

Lithostrotia Lithostrotia is a clade of derived titanosaur sauropods that lived during the Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous. The group was defined by Upchurch ''et al.'' in 2004 as the most recent common ancestor of '' Malawisaurus'' and '' Saltasaurus'' ...

. According to the 2019 study, ''Jiangshanosaurus'' was placed in the

Somphospondyli Somphospondyli is an extinct clade of titanosauriform sauropods that lived from the Late Jurassic until the end of the Late Cretaceous, comprising all titanosauriforms more closely related to Titanosauria proper than Brachiosauridae. The remains ...

in a basal position, outside the Titanosauria.

References

Fossil taxa described in 2001 Paleontology in Zhejiang {{Sauropodomorph-stub Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia