''Bellusaurus'' (meaning "Beautiful lizard", from

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

''bellus'' 'beautiful' (

masculine Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some beh ...

form) and

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

''sauros'' 'lizard') was a

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 b ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

from the

Late Jurassic The Late Jurassic is the third Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time scale, geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 143.1 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic stratum, strata.Owen ...

( Oxfordian) known from juvenile specimens that would have measured about long. Its fossils were found in Shishugou Formation rocks in the northeastern Junggar Basin in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Discovery and naming

The

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...

and only known species is ''Bellusaurus sui'', formally described by

Dong Zhiming Dong Zhiming (Chinese language, Chinese: 董枝明, Pinyin: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; January 1937 – 20 October 2024) was a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist formerly employed at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) ...

in 1991. The remains of ''Bellusaurus'' were found in the Shishugou Formation in the northeastern Junggar Basin in

. 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 dinosaur remains. ''Bellusaurus'' was the last restoration undertaken by Mr. Sui.

Fossil record

''Bellusaurus sui'' is known from a large amount of disarticulated material of juvenile individuals. These specimens may have been only around two years old, and still rapidly growing, when they died.

Description

The length of ''Bellusaurus'' has been estimated to be , although this is based on juvenile individuals.

Classification

''Bellusaurus'' was originally placed in the Brachiosauridae by Dong, based on a historical classification scheme in which Brachiosauridae was used as a catch-all for sauropods with broad teeth, including taxa such as ''

Camarasaurus ''Camarasaurus'' ( ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Its fossil remains have been found in the Morrison Formation, dating to the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages of the Jurassic, betwe ...

'', ''

Cetiosaurus ''Cetiosaurus'' ( meaning 'whale lizard', from the Greek '/ meaning 'sea monster' (later, 'whale') and '/ meaning 'lizard'), is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic Period, living about 171 to 165 million years ago ...

'', and '' Euhelopus'', rather than implying a close relationship with ''

Brachiosaurus ''Brachiosaurus'' () is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic, about . It was first Species description, described by American paleontologist Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 in paleontology, 1903 from fossi ...

'' in particular. Dong established a new subfamily, Bellusaurinae, for ''Bellusaurus'', and proposed that '' Pleurocoelus'', another sauropod based on juvenile material, should also be classified in Bellusaurinae. More recent phylogenetic analyses have recovered ''Bellusaurus'' outside

Neosauropoda Neosauropoda is a clade within Dinosauria, coined in 1986 by Argentina, Argentine paleontologist José Bonaparte and currently described as ''Saltasaurus loricatus'', ''Diplodocus longus'', and all animals directly descended from their most recent ...

or near the base of

Macronaria 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 ...

. In 2023, a study proposed that ''Bellusaurus'' is a mamenchisaurid.

References

External links

''Bellusaurus''
in the Dino Directory {{Taxonbar, from1=Q29057471, from2=Q1362710 Sauropoda Dinosaur genera Oxfordian dinosaurs Shishugou Formation Fossil taxa described in 1990 Taxa named by Dong Zhiming Dinosaurs of China