Yimenosaurus
"Yimen reptile"
- Length
- 9 m (29.5 ft)
- Period
- Early Jurassic (190 Mya)
- Place
- China
- Food
- Herbivore
- Clade
- Dinosauria The clade containing all dinosaurs, terrestrial archosaurs with upright limbs.
Yimenosaurus (meaning “Yimen reptile”) is an extinct genus of plateosaurid sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived in China in the Early Jurassic. The genus was first named in 1990 by Ziqi Bai, Jie Yang and Guohui Wang, along with its type and only species, Yimenosaurus youngi. The species name honours renowned Chinese paleontologist Yang Zhongjian, the father of Chinese paleontology, known as C.C. Young in English. Known material includes the holotype, an almost complete skull and mandible, as well as incomplete cervical and dorsal vertebrae, a mostly complete sacrum, an ilium, ischia, partial ribs and complete femur, and a paratype, a well-preserved postcrania with a fragmentary skull. In 2010 Paul estimated its length at 9 m and its weight at 2 t.
What we know
- Named by Bai et al., 1990.
- Body length estimated at about 9 m.
- Fossils found in China.
What we guess
The reconstruction notes for Yimenosaurus — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.