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A New Family of Sauropod Dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Tianzhen, Shanxi Province, China
Author(s) -
Qiqing PANG,
Zhengwu CHENG
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
acta geologica sinica ‐ english edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.444
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1755-6724
pISSN - 1000-9515
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-6724.2000.tb00438.x
Subject(s) - cretaceous , sauropoda , paleontology , anatomy , dorsum , genus , geology , biology , zoology
A new gigantic sauropod, Huabeisaurus allocotus gen. et sp. nov., about 20 m in length and 5 m in height, was discovered in the Upper Cretaceous Huiquanpu Formation, Tianzhen County, Shanxi Province. It is notably different from Diplodocidae, Titanosauridae and Nemegtosauridae in the following aspects: the teeth are strong, peglike with a length ratio of the tooth crown to tooth root at about 3 to 1; the cervical vertebrae are long with forked spines; the spines in dorsal vertebrae are relatively high, unbifurcated; the caudal vertebrae are amphicoelous, with anterior neural spines and unbifurcated spines and chevrons; the femur is straight and long, narrow and flat and the tibia and fibula are long and flat. These characters show that the described genus should represent a new family, Huabeisauridae fam. nov. The discovery enriches the sauropod dinosaur record in China, and is quite significant to the study of the taxonomy, evolution, migration, extinction and palaeobiogeographic provincialism of the Late Cretaceous sauropod dinosaurs.