''Jingshanosaurus'' (meaning "Jingshan lizard") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

sauropodomorph Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lon ...

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 ...

s from the early

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and 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 Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

period 201.3 million years ago that went extinct 199.3 million years ago in the Hettangian Age. Its maximum weight was around 4.3 t with an adult

femur The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates wit ...

length of 845 mm. ''Jingshanosaurus xinwaensis'' grew to be 5 meters (16.4 ft) long.

History of discovery

Its fossils, a nearly complete skeleton including the skull, were found near the town of Jingshan ("Golden Hill"),

Lufeng County Lufeng (; Chuxiong Yi script: , IPA：) is a county-level city located in Yunnan province, China, administered as a part of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture (; Chuxiong Yi script: ， IPA: ; Yi script: ꊉ� ...

Yunnan Province Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

, China, from which the name derives. First described in 1995, the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

is ''J. xinwaensis'', formalized by Zhang and Yang.Y. Zhang, and Z. Yang. (1995). ''A new complete osteology of Prosauropoda in Lufeng Basin, Yunnan, China''. Yunnan Publishing House of Science and Technology, Kunming, China 1-100. hinese/ref> Fossil remains of ''Jingshanosaurus'' had been exhibited in museums several years prior to the formal naming. A complete skeleton and

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

of ''Jingshanosaurus xinwaensis'' have been found and is considered the last

prosauropods Plateosauridae is a family of plateosaurian sauropodomorphs from the Late Triassic of Europe, Greenland, Africa and Asia. Although several dinosaurs have been classified as plateosaurids over the years, the family Plateosauridae is now restrict ...

to live on

earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

Classification

''Jingshanosaurus'' may have been most closely related to ''

Yunnanosaurus ''Yunnanosaurus'' ( ) is an extinct genus of sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived approximately 199 to 183 million years ago in what is now the Yunnan Province, in China, for which it was named. ''Yunnanosaurus'' was a large sized, moderately-bui ...

'', and has, at times, been included in the Yunnanosauridae. In fact,

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 th ...

considered ''Jingshanosaurus'' possibly a large specimen of ''Yunnanosaurus''. If true, this would make ''Jingshanosaurus'' a junior synonym of ''Yunnanosaurus''.

References

Massopoda Early Jurassic dinosaurs of Asia Taxa named by Dong Zhiming Fossil taxa described in 1995 Paleontology in Yunnan {{Sauropodomorph-stub