YUNNANOSAURUS
a plant-eating anchisaurian sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of China.
Pronunciation: yoo-NAH-no-SOR-us
Meaning: Yunnan lizard
Author/s: C.C. Young (
1940)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Yunnan, China
Discovery Chart Position: #179
Yunnanosaurus huangi
For many years, China ha a monopoly on dinosaurs beginning with the letter "Y", and Yunnanosaurus huangi — an Early Jurassic non-sauropod sauropodomorph — was the first of many. Well, at least sixteen.
Its spoon-shaped teeth were constantly spooning each other, and the non-stop rubbing as it ate meant they were self-sharpening. Amongst primitive creatures such as Yunnanosaurus, this was considered a mod-con, akin to finding an iPod Nano attached to a scrapheap Morris Minor. Self-sharpening teeth are common in earlyish macronarian sauropods such as Brachiosaurus, but they weren't close relatives.
(Yunnan Lizard from Huangchiatien)Etymology
Yunnanosaurus is derived from "Yunnan" (for Yunnan Province) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
huangi, is named for the
Huangchiatien locality.
Discovery
The first fossils of
Yunnanosaurus were discovered at Huangchiatien in the Zhangjiawa Member of the Lufeng Formation, Yunnan, China.
The
holotype (IVPP AS V.20) is a partial skeleton missing a skull and bits of its front and hind legs.
Yunnanosaurus robustus (including its
lapsus calami Yuannanosaurus robustas, Young 1982) was coined in 1951 for IVPP V93 from Huangchiatien by C-C Young, based on its more robust build compared to
Yunnanosaurus huangi from the very same area. At that time, the latter was known only from juvenile specimens, but almost all palaeontologists now treat the pair as synonymous, with the former as the adult form. That being said, Toru Sekiya assigned a juvenile specimen (ZMNH-M8739) from Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture to
Yunnanosaurus robustus in 2014.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Early Jurassic
Stage: Hettangian-Simemurian
Age range: 201-189 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 7 meters
Est. max. hip height: 2 meters
Est. max. weight: 700 Kg
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Young CC (1940) "Preliminary notes on the Lufeng vertebrate fossils".
Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, 20(3-4): 235-239
• Young CC (1942) "
Yunnanosaurus huangi Young (gen. et sp. nov.), a new Prosauropoda from the red beds at Lufeng, Yunnan".
Acta Geologica Sinica, 22(1-2): 63-104.
• Young CC (1951) "The Lufeng saurischian fauna from China".
Paleontologica Sinica, Series C, 13: 1-96.
• Dodson P, Britt B, Carpenter K, Forster CA, Gillette DD, Norell MA, Olshevsky G, Parrish MJ and Weishampel DB (1994) "
Yunnanosaurus". In "
The Age of Dinosaurs".
• Lu J, Li T, Zhong S, Azuma Y, Fujita M, Dong Z and Ji Q (2007) "
New yunnanosaurid dinosaur (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda) from the Middle Jurassic Zhanghe Formation of Yuanmou, Yunnan Province of China".
Memoir of the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum, 6: 1-15.
• Barrett PM, Upchurch P, Zhou X-D and Wang X-L (2007) "The skull of
Yunnanosaurus huangi Young, 1942 (Dinosauria: Prosauropoda) from the Lower Lufeng Formation (Lower Jurassic) of Yunnan, China".
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 150(2): 319-341. DOI: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2007.00290.x.
• Sekiya T, Jin X-S, Zheng W-J, Shibata M and Azuma Y (2013) "A new juvenile specimen of
Yunnanosaurus robustus (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) from Early to Middle Jurassic of Chuxiong Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China".
Historical Biology, 26(2). DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2013.821702.
• Ren X-X, Su X, Wang G-F and You H-L (2021) "Sedimentological evidence suggests an Early Jurassic age for Yunnanosaurus youngi (Dinosauria: Sauropodomorpha) in Yunnan Province of China".
Historical Biology, 34(9): 1827–1833. DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2021.1984445.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
YUNNANOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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