Jingshanosaurus (meaning "Jingshan lizard") is a genus of sauropodomorphdinosaurs from the early Jurassic 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 length of 845 mm.[1]Jingshanosaurus xinwaensis grew to be 5 meters (16.4 ft) long.[2]
History of discovery
Restoration
Its fossils, a nearly complete skeleton including the skull, were found near the town of Jingshan ("Golden Hill"), Lufeng County, Yunnan Province, China, from which the name derives.[3] First described in 1995, the type species is J. xinwaensis, formalized by Zhang and Yang.[4] Fossil remains of Jingshanosaurus had been exhibited in museums several years prior to the formal naming. A complete skeleton and skull of Jingshanosaurus xinwaensis have been found and is considered the last prosauropods to live on earth.[5]
Classification
Jingshanosaurus may have been most closely related to Yunnanosaurus, and has, at times, been included in the Yunnanosauridae. In fact, Dong Zhiming considered Jingshanosaurus possibly a large specimen of Yunnanosaurus. If true, this would make Jingshanosaurus a junior synonym of Yunnanosaurus.
^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. [Chinese]
