''Silutitan'' (meaning "

Silk Road The Silk Road () was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and reli ...

giant") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

euhelopodid Euhelopodidae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs of disputed membership and affinities, which contains ''Euhelopus'' and its close relatives. Most proposed euhelopodids are from East Asia. Euhelopodidae was first recognized by Carl Wiman in 1929, ...

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 bo ...

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 ...

from the

Shengjinkou Formation The Shengjinkou Formation is an Early Cretaceous (Aptian)-aged Konservat-Lagerstätte composed of "interbedded red green and yellow variegated mudstones and siltstones" that is part of the larger Tugulu Group of China.Lucas, Spencer G, Chinese Fos ...

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...

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 contains only 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 specimen ...

, ''Silutitan sinensis''.

Discovery and naming

In 2006, a Konservat-Lagerstätte was reported from the

in the

Hami Hami (Kumul) is a prefecture-level city in Eastern Xinjiang, China. It is well known as the home of sweet Hami melons. In early 2016, the former Hami county-level city was merged with Hami Prefecture to form the Hami prefecture-level city with t ...

region of

, China. This consisted of lake sediments allowing for exceptional preservation of fossils. The same year, Qiu Zhanxiang and Wang Banyue started official excavations. Among the excavated fossils were six

cervical vertebrae In tetrapods, cervical vertebrae (singular: vertebra) are the vertebrae of the neck, immediately below the skull. Truncal vertebrae (divided into thoracic and lumbar vertebrae in mammals) lie caudal (toward the tail) of cervical vertebrae. In ...

with all neural spines intact. In 2021, these were established as the holotype (IVPP V27874) of the new sauropod taxon, ''Silutitan''. A ''

Hamipterus ''Hamipterus'' is an extinct genus of pteranodontoid pterosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Shengjinkou Formation of northwestern China. It is known from a single species, the type species, ''H. tianshanensis''. * Discovery and naming In 2006 fro ...

'' jaw was found near the tenth cervical vertebra, but this is likely due to

taphonomy Taphonomy is the study of how organisms decay and become fossilized or preserved in the paleontological record. The term ''taphonomy'' (from Greek , 'burial' and , 'law') was introduced to paleontology in 1940 by Soviet scientist Ivan Efremov t ...

. The generic name, refers to the

(''Silu'' in

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

), while the specific name, ''sinensis,'' refers to China.

Classification

The phylogenetic analysis of Wang ''et al.'' places ''Silutitan'' as the sister taxon to ''

Euhelopus ''Euhelopus'' is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 145 and 133 million years ago during the Berriasian and Valanginian stages of the Early Cretaceous in what is now Shandong Province in China. It was a large quadrupedal herbivore. U ...

'', a position that does not change when it is combined with the contemporary titanosaur ''

Hamititan ''Hamititan'' (meaning "Hami giant") is a genus of titanosaur sauropod dinosaur from the Shengjinkou Formation of Xinjiang, China. It contains one species, the type species, ''Hamititan xinjiangensis''. Discovery and naming In 2006, a Konserv ...

'' into a single unit.

Paleobiology

Other animals from the holotype locality include the pterosaur ''

'' and contemporary titanosaur ''

'', which was described in the same paper. Together, ''Silutitan'', the aforementioned fauna and an unnamed theropod represent the known vertebrate taxa of the area.

References

Macronarians Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Cretaceous China Fossil taxa described in 2021 {{sauropodomorph-stub