''Shidaisaurus'' is a genus of

metriacanthosaurid Metriacanthosauridae is an extinct family (biology), family of Allosauroidea, allosauroid theropod dinosaurs that lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. When broken down into its Greek roots, it means "moderately-spined lizards". ...

dinosaur. Its fossil was found in early

Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 163.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations co ...

-age rocks of the Chuanjie Formation in Yunnan,

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It is known from a partial skeleton, holotype DML-LCA 9701-IV, found at the bottom of an assemblage of nine dinosaur individuals, lacking most of the tail vertebrae, ribs, pectoral girdle, and limb bones. ''Shidaisaurus'' was described in

2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...

by Wu and colleagues. The type species is ''Shidaisaurus jinae''. Generic name and

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

in combination refer to the Jin-Shidai ("Golden Age") Company that exploits the Jurassic World Park near the site. This theropod according to Gregory Paul was about long and it weighed around . In 2016 another estimation listed it higher at 7.1 meters (23.3 feet) long and 950 kilograms (2,094 lbs). It is the oldest Allosauroid known to date.

References

Metriacanthosaurids Middle Jurassic dinosaurs of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2009 Taxa named by Philip J. Currie Paleontology in Yunnan {{theropod-stub