Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum Hudiesaurus

Hudiesaurus (meaning “butterfly lizard”) is an extinct genus of mamenchisaurid sauropod dinosaur that lived in present-day China during the Late Jurassic period. It was described by Chinese paleontologist Dong Zhiming in 1997. The genus contains a single species, Hudiesaurus sinojapanorum, named based on a single vertebra. However, he also assigned teeth and limb bones from a nearby locality to H. sinojapanorum. These fossils were unearthed by the Sino-Japanese Silk Road Expedition near Qiketai in Shanshan, Xinjiang province in rock layers coming from the Kalaza Formation. This formation dates to between the Late Kimmeridgian and Tithonian stages of the Late Jurassic, 154 to 143 million years ago. Dong believed that the vertebra was a dorsal (trunk) vertebra, but later analysis suggested that it is one of the last cervical (neck) vertebrae.