Huanghetitan

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Huanghetitan
Fossil range: Early Cretaceous

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Saurischia
Suborder:	Sauropodomorpha
(unranked)	Titanosauriformes
Family:	Huanghetitanidae Lu et al., 2007
Genus:	Huanghetitan You et al., 2006

Species

H. liujiaxiaensis (type)
H. ruyangensis Lu et al., 2007

Huanghetitan (meaning "Yellow River titan"), is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period. It was a basal titanosauriform which lived in what is now Gansu, China.

The type species, Huanghetitan liujiaxiaensis, was described by You et al. in 2006. It is known from fragmentary materials including two caudal vertebrae, an almost complete sacrum, rib fragments, and the left shoulder gridle, and was discovered in the eastern part of the Lanzhou Basin (Hekou group) in the Gansu Province in 2004.^[1] A second species, H. ruyangensis, was described in 2007 from the Magchuan Formation of Ruyang County, China (Henan Province). It is known from a partial vertebral column and several ribs, the size of which (the largest approched 3 meters, or 10 ft long) indicate it had among the deepest body cavities of any known dinosaur.^[2] In 2007, Lu et al. created a new family for Huanghetitan, the Huangetitanidae.^[2]

[edit] References

^ You, H., Li, D., Zhou, L., and Ji, Q., (2006). "Huanghetitan liujiaxiaensis. a New Sauropod Dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Hekou Group of Lanzhou Basin, Gansu Province, China." Geological Review, 52 (5): 668-674.
^ ^a ^b Lu J., Xu, L., Zhang, X., Hu, W., Wu, Y., Jia, S., and Ji, Q. (2007). "A new gigantic sauropod dinosaur with the deepest known body cavity from the Cretaceous of Asia." Acta Geologica Sinica, 81: 167-176.