Yizhousaurus
"Yizhou lizard"
- Length
- 5 m (16.4 ft)
- Period
- Early Jurassic (201–174 Mya)
- Place
- China
- Food
- Herbivore
- Clade
- Dinosauria The clade containing all dinosaurs, terrestrial archosaurs with upright limbs.
Yizhousaurus (meaning “Yizhou lizard”, after the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Region) is a genus of basal sauropodiform dinosaurs which existed in what is now Lufeng Formation, Yunnan Province of southern China during the lower Jurassic period. Identified from a nearly complete and exquisitely preserved skeleton, it is the most complete basal sauropod currently known with intact skull. Although its name was revealed in a 2010 Geological Society of America abstract by Sankar Chatterjee, T. Wang, S.G. Pan, Z. Dong, X.C. Wu, and Paul Upchurch, it wasn’t validly named and described until 2018. The type species is Yizhousaurus sunae.
What we know
- Named by Zhang et al., 2018.
- Fossils found in China.
What we guess
The reconstruction notes for Yizhousaurus — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.