Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian, 419.2 million years ago, to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 358.9 Mya. It is named after Devon, where rocks from this period were first studied; the first significant adaptive radiation of life on dry land occurred during the Devonian. Free-sporing vascular plants began to spread across dry land, forming extensive forests which covered the continents. By the middle of the Devonian, several groups of plants had evolved leaves and true roots, by the end of the period the first seed-bearing plants appeared. Various terrestrial arthropods became well-established. Fish reached substantial diversity during this time, leading the Devonian to be dubbed the "Age of Fishes." The first ray-finned and lobe-finned bony fish appeared, while the placoderms began dominating every known aquatic environment. The ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates began adapting to walking on land, as their strong pectoral and pelvic fins evolved into legs.
In the oceans, primitive sharks became more numerous than in the Late Ordovician. The first ammonites, species of molluscs, appeared. Trilobites, the mollusc-like brachiopods and the great coral reefs, were still common; the Late Devonian extinction which started about 375 million years ago affected marine life, killing off all placodermi, all trilobites, save for a few species of the order Proetida. The palaeogeography was dominated by the supercontinent of Gondwana to the south, the continent of Siberia to the north, the early formation of the small continent of Euramerica in between; the period is named after Devon, a county in southwestern England, where a controversial argument in the 1830s over the age and structure of the rocks found distributed throughout the county was resolved by the definition of the Devonian period in the geological timescale. The Great Devonian Controversy was a long period of vigorous argument and counter-argument between the main protagonists of Roderick Murchison with Adam Sedgwick against Henry De la Beche supported by George Bellas Greenough.
Murchison and Sedgwick named the period they proposed as the Devonian System. While the rock beds that define the start and end of the Devonian period are well identified, the exact dates are uncertain. According to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Devonian extends from the end of the Silurian 419.2 Mya, to the beginning of the Carboniferous 358.9 Mya. In nineteenth-century texts the Devonian has been called the "Old Red Age", after the red and brown terrestrial deposits known in the United Kingdom as the Old Red Sandstone in which early fossil discoveries were found. Another common term is "Age of the Fishes", referring to the evolution of several major groups of fish that took place during the period. Older literature on the Anglo-Welsh basin divides it into the Downtonian, Dittonian and Farlovian stages, the latter three of which are placed in the Devonian; the Devonian has erroneously been characterised as a "greenhouse age", due to sampling bias: most of the early Devonian-age discoveries came from the strata of western Europe and eastern North America, which at the time straddled the Equator as part of the supercontinent of Euramerica where fossil signatures of widespread reefs indicate tropical climates that were warm and moderately humid but in fact the climate in the Devonian differed during its epochs and between geographic regions.
For example, during the Early Devonian, arid conditions were prevalent through much of the world including Siberia, North America, China, but Africa and South America had a warm temperate climate. In the Late Devonian, by contrast, arid conditions were less prevalent across the world and temperate climates were more common; the Devonian Period is formally broken into Early and Late subdivisions. The rocks corresponding to those epochs are referred to as belonging to the Lower and Upper parts of the Devonian System. Early DevonianThe Early Devonian lasted from 419.2 ± 2.8 to 393.3 ± 2.5 and began with the Lochkovian stage, which lasted until the Pragian. It spanned from 410.8 ± 2.8 to 407.6 ± 2.5, was followed by the Emsian, which lasted until the Middle Devonian began, 393.3± 2.7 million years ago. During this time, the first ammonoids appeared. Ammonoids during this time period differed little from their nautiloid counterparts; these ammonoids belong to the order Agoniatitida, which in epochs evolved to new ammonoid orders, for example Goniatitida and Clymeniida.
This class of cephalopod molluscs would dominate the marine fauna until the beginning of the Mesozoic era. Middle DevonianThe Middle Devonian comprised two subdivisions: first the Eifelian, which gave way to the Givetian 387.7± 2.7 million years ago. During this time the jawless agnathan fishes began to decline in diversity in freshwater and marine environments due to drastic environmental changes and due to the increasing competition and diversity of jawed fishes; the shallow, oxygen-depleted waters of Devonian inland lakes, surrounded by primitive plants, provided the environment necessary for certain early fish to develop such essential characteristics as well developed lungs, the ability to crawl out of the water and onto the land for short periods of time. Late DevonianFinally, the Late Devonian started with the Frasnian, 382.7 ± 2.8 to 372.2 ± 2.5, during which the first forests took shape on land. The first tetrapods appeared in the fossil record in the ensuing Famennian subdivisi
Jurassic
The Jurassic period was a geologic period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era known as the Age of Reptiles; the start of the period was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. Two other extinction events occurred during the period: the Pliensbachian-Toarcian extinction in the Early Jurassic, the Tithonian event at the end; the Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations; the Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains within the European Alps, where limestone strata from the period were first identified. By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north, Gondwana to the south; this created more coastlines and shifted the continental climate from dry to humid, many of the arid deserts of the Triassic were replaced by lush rainforests.
On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated by both dinosauromorph and crocodylomorph archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, having evolved from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards, the evolution of therian mammals, including primitive placentals. Crocodilians made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic mode of life; the oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The chronostratigraphic term "Jurassic" is directly linked to the Jura Mountains, a mountain range following the course of the France–Switzerland border. During a tour of the region in 1795, Alexander von Humboldt recognized the limestone dominated mountain range of the Jura Mountains as a separate formation that had not been included in the established stratigraphic system defined by Abraham Gottlob Werner, he named it "Jura-Kalkstein" in 1799.
The name "Jura" is derived from the Celtic root *jor via Gaulish *iuris "wooded mountain", borrowed into Latin as a place name, evolved into Juria and Jura. The Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations known as Lias and Malm in Europe; the separation of the term Jurassic into three sections originated with Leopold von Buch. The faunal stages from youngest to oldest are: During the early Jurassic period, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana; the Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous period, when Gondwana itself rifted apart. The Tethys Sea closed, the Neotethys basin appeared. Climates were warm, with no evidence of a glacier having appeared; as in the Triassic, there was no land over either pole, no extensive ice caps existed.
The Jurassic geological record is good in western Europe, where extensive marine sequences indicate a time when much of that future landmass was submerged under shallow tropical seas. In contrast, the North American Jurassic record is the poorest of the Mesozoic, with few outcrops at the surface. Though the epicontinental Sundance Sea left marine deposits in parts of the northern plains of the United States and Canada during the late Jurassic, most exposed sediments from this period are continental, such as the alluvial deposits of the Morrison Formation; the Jurassic was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, invertebrate faunas with dominantly calcitic skeletons; the first of several massive batholiths were emplaced in the northern American cordillera beginning in the mid-Jurassic, marking the Nevadan orogeny. Important Jurassic exposures are found in Russia, South America, Japan and the United Kingdom.
In Africa, Early Jurassic strata are distributed in a similar fashion to Late Triassic beds, with more common outcrops in the south and less common fossil beds which are predominated by tracks to the north. As the Jurassic proceeded and more iconic groups of dinosaurs like sauropods and ornithopods proliferated in Africa. Middle Jurassic strata are neither well studied in Africa. Late Jurassic strata are poorly represented apart from the spectacular Tendaguru fauna in Tanzania; the Late Jurassic life of Tendaguru is similar to that found in western North America's Morrison Formation. During the Jurassic period, the primary vertebrates living in the sea were marine reptiles; the latter include ichthyosaurs, which were at the peak of their diversity, plesiosaurs and marine crocodiles of the families Teleosauridae and Metriorhynchidae. Numerous turtles could be found in rivers. In the invertebrate world, several new groups appeared, including rudists (a reef-formi
Early Jurassic
The Early Jurassic epoch is the earliest of three epochs of the Jurassic period. The Early Jurassic starts after the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, 201.3 Ma, ends at the start of the Middle Jurassic 174.1 Ma. Certain rocks of marine origin of this age in Europe are called "Lias" and that name was used for the period, as well, in 19th-century geology. In southern Germany rocks of this age are called Black Jurassic. There are two possible origins for the name Lias: the first reason is it was taken by a geologist from an English quarryman's dialect pronunciation of the word "layers". There are extensive Liassic outcrops around the coast of the United Kingdom, in particular in Glamorgan, North Yorkshire and Dorset. The'Jurassic Coast' of Dorset is associated with the pioneering work of Mary Anning of Lyme Regis; the facies of the Lower Jurassic in this area are predominantly of clays, thin limestones and siltstones, deposited under marine conditions. Lias Group strata form imposing cliffs in southern Wales.
Stretching for around 14 miles between Cardiff and Porthcawl, the remarkable layers of these cliffs, situated on the Bristol Channel are a rhythmic decimetre scale repetition of limestone and mudstone formed as a late Triassic desert was inundated by the sea. There has been some debate over the actual base of the Hettangian stage, so of the Jurassic system itself. Biostratigraphically, the first appearance of psiloceratid ammonites has been used. If this biostratigraphical indicator is used technically the Lias Group—a lithostratigraphical division—spans the Jurassic / Triassic boundary. During this period, which had died out at the end-of-Triassic extinction, radiated out into a huge diversity of new forms with complex suture patterns. Ammonites evolved so and their shells are so preserved, that they serve as important zone fossils. There were several distinct waves of ammonite evolution in Europe alone; the Early Jurassic was an important time in the evolution of the marine reptiles. The Hettangian saw the existing Rhaetian ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs continuing to flourish, while at the same time a number of new types of these marine reptiles appeared, such as Ichthyosaurus and Temnodontosaurus among the ichthyosaurs, Eurycleidus and Rhomaleosaurus among the plesiosaurs.
All these plesiosaurs had large heads. In the Toarcian, at the end of the Early Jurassic, the thalattosuchians appeared, as did new genera of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. On land, a number of new types of dinosaurs—the heterodontosaurids, scelidosaurs and tetanurans—appeared, joined those groups like the coelophysoids and the sauropods that had continued over from the Triassic. Accompanying them as small carnivores were the sphenosuchian and protosuchid crocodilians. In the air, new types of pterosaurs replaced those, but in the undergrowth were various types of early mammals, as well as tritylodont mammal-like reptiles, lizard-like sphenodonts, early lissamphibians. Late Triassic Toarcian turnover Davies, A. M. An Introduction to Palaeontology, Thomas Murby & Co. London House, M. R. Geology of The Dorset Coast, The Geologists' Association. Simms, M. J. Chidlaw, N. Morton, N. and Page, K. N. British Lower Jurassic Stratigraphy, Geological Conservation Review Series, No. 30, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough.
Early Jurassic Period – The Lias epoch. Palaeos – overall presentation. Lecture 12 – Early Jurassic. Informative lecture notes by Dr. Paul Olsen
Saurischia
Saurischia is one of the two basic divisions of dinosaurs. ‘Saurischia’ translates to lizard-hipped. In 1888, Harry Seeley classified dinosaurs into two orders, based on their hip structure, though today most paleontologists classify Saurischia as an unranked clade rather than an order. All carnivorous dinosaurs are traditionally classified as saurischians, as are all of the birds and one of the two primary lineages of herbivorous dinosaurs, the sauropodomorphs. At the end of the Cretaceous Period, all saurischians except the birds became extinct in the course of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Birds, as direct descendants of one group of theropod dinosaurs, are a sub-clade of saurischian dinosaurs in phylogenetic classification. Saurischian dinosaurs are traditionally distinguished from ornithischian dinosaurs by their three-pronged pelvic structure, with the pubis pointed forward; the ornithischians' pelvis is arranged with the pubis rotated backward, parallel with the ischium also with a forward-pointing process, giving a four-pronged structure.
The saurischian hip structure led Seeley to name them "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs, because they retained the ancestral hip anatomy found in modern lizards and other reptiles. He named ornithischians "bird-hipped" dinosaurs because their hip arrangement was superficially similar to that of birds, though he did not propose any specific relationship between ornithischians and birds. However, in the view which has long been held, this "bird-hipped" arrangement evolved several times independently in dinosaurs, first in the ornithischians in the lineage of saurischians including birds, lastly in the therizinosaurians; this would be an example of convergent evolution, therizinosaurians, ornithischian dinosaurs all developed a similar hip anatomy independently of each other as an adaptation to their herbivorous or omnivorous diets. In his paper naming the two groups, Seeley reviewed previous classification schemes put forth by other paleontologists to divide up the traditional order Dinosauria, he preferred one, put forward by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, which divided dinosaurs into four orders: Sauropoda, Theropoda and Stegosauria.
Seeley, wanted to formulate a classification that would take into account a single primary difference between major dinosaurian groups based on a characteristic that differentiated them from other reptiles. He found this in the configuration of the hip bones, found that all four of Marsh's orders could be divided neatly into two major groups based on this feature, he placed the Stegosauria and Ornithopoda in the Ornithischia, the Theropoda and Sauropoda in the Saurischia. Furthermore, Seeley used this major difference in the hip bones, along with many other noted differences between the two groups, to argue that "dinosaurs" were not a natural grouping at all, but rather two distinct orders that had arisen independently from more primitive archosaurs; this concept that "dinosaur" was an outdated term for two distinct orders lasted many decades in the scientific and popular literature, it was not until the 1960s that scientists began to again consider the possibility that saurischians and ornithischians were more related to each other than they were to other archosaurs.
Although his concept of a polyphyletic Dinosauria is no longer accepted by most paleontologists, Seeley's basic division of the two dinosaurian groups has stood the test of time, has been supported by modern cladistic analysis of relationships among dinosaurs. One alternative hypothesis challenging Seeley's classification was proposed by Robert T. Bakker in his 1986 book The Dinosaur Heresies. Bakker's classification separated the theropods into their own group and placed the two groups of herbivorous dinosaurs together in a separate group he named the Phytodinosauria; the Phytodinosauria hypothesis was based on the supposed link between ornithischians and prosauropods, the idea that the former had evolved directly from the latter by way of an enigmatic family that seemed to possess characters of both groups, the segnosaurs. However, it was found that segnosaurs were an unusual type of herbivorous theropod saurischian related to birds, the Phytodinosauria hypothesis fell out of favor. A 2017 study by Dr Matthew Grant Baron, Dr David B. Norman and Prof. Paul M. Barrett did not find support for a monophyletic Saurischia, according to its traditional definition.
Instead, the group was found to be paraphyletic, with Theropoda removed from the group and placed as the sister group to the Ornithischia in the newly defined clade Ornithoscelida. As a result, the authors redefined Saurischia as "the most inclusive clade that contains D. carnegii, but not T. horridus", resulting in a clade containing only the Sauropodomorpha and Herrerasauridae
Cambrian
The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya. Its subdivisions, its base, are somewhat in flux; the period was established by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name of Wales, where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells; as a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some periods. The Cambrian marked a profound change in life on Earth. Complex, multicellular organisms became more common in the millions of years preceding the Cambrian, but it was not until this period that mineralized—hence fossilized—organisms became common; the rapid diversification of life forms in the Cambrian, known as the Cambrian explosion, produced the first representatives of all modern animal phyla.
Phylogenetic analysis has supported the view that during the Cambrian radiation, metazoa evolved monophyletically from a single common ancestor: flagellated colonial protists similar to modern choanoflagellates. Although diverse life forms prospered in the oceans, the land is thought to have been comparatively barren—with nothing more complex than a microbial soil crust and a few molluscs that emerged to browse on the microbial biofilm. Most of the continents were dry and rocky due to a lack of vegetation. Shallow seas flanked the margins of several continents created during the breakup of the supercontinent Pannotia; the seas were warm, polar ice was absent for much of the period. Despite the long recognition of its distinction from younger Ordovician rocks and older Precambrian rocks, it was not until 1994 that the Cambrian system/period was internationally ratified; the base of the Cambrian lies atop a complex assemblage of trace fossils known as the Treptichnus pedum assemblage. The use of Treptichnus pedum, a reference ichnofossil to mark the lower boundary of the Cambrian, is difficult since the occurrence of similar trace fossils belonging to the Treptichnids group are found well below the T. pedum in Namibia and Newfoundland, in the western USA.
The stratigraphic range of T. pedum overlaps the range of the Ediacaran fossils in Namibia, in Spain. The Cambrian Period was followed by the Ordovician Period; the Cambrian is divided into ten ages. Only three series and six stages are named and have a GSSP; because the international stratigraphic subdivision is not yet complete, many local subdivisions are still used. In some of these subdivisions the Cambrian is divided into three series with locally differing names – the Early Cambrian, Middle Cambrian and Furongian. Rocks of these epochs are referred to as belonging to Upper Cambrian. Trilobite zones allow biostratigraphic correlation in the Cambrian; each of the local series is divided into several stages. The Cambrian is divided into several regional faunal stages of which the Russian-Kazakhian system is most used in international parlance: *Most Russian paleontologists define the lower boundary of the Cambrian at the base of the Tommotian Stage, characterized by diversification and global distribution of organisms with mineral skeletons and the appearance of the first Archaeocyath bioherms.
The International Commission on Stratigraphy list the Cambrian period as beginning at 541 million years ago and ending at 485.4 million years ago. The lower boundary of the Cambrian was held to represent the first appearance of complex life, represented by trilobites; the recognition of small shelly fossils before the first trilobites, Ediacara biota earlier, led to calls for a more defined base to the Cambrian period. After decades of careful consideration, a continuous sedimentary sequence at Fortune Head, Newfoundland was settled upon as a formal base of the Cambrian period, to be correlated worldwide by the earliest appearance of Treptichnus pedum. Discovery of this fossil a few metres below the GSSP led to the refinement of this statement, it is the T. pedum ichnofossil assemblage, now formally used to correlate the base of the Cambrian. This formal designation allowed radiometric dates to be obtained from samples across the globe that corresponded to the base of the Cambrian. Early dates of 570 million years ago gained favour, though the methods used to obtain this number are now considered to be unsuitable and inaccurate.
A more precise date using modern radiometric dating yield a date of 541 ± 0.3 million years ago. The ash horizon in Oman from which this date was recovered corresponds to a marked fall in the abundance of carbon-13 that correlates to equivalent excursions elsewhere in the world, to the disappearance of distinctive Ediacaran fossils. There are arguments that the dated horizon in Oman does not correspond to the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary, but represents a facies change from marine to evaporite-dominated strata — which w
Sauropoda
Sauropoda, or the sauropods, are a clade of saurischian dinosaurs. They had long necks, long tails, small heads, four thick, pillar-like legs, they are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, the group includes the largest animals to have lived on land. Well-known genera include Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus and Brontosaurus. Sauropods first appeared in the late Triassic Period, where they somewhat resembled the related group "Prosauropoda". By the Late Jurassic, sauropods had become widespread. By the Late Cretaceous, those groups had been replaced by the titanosaurs, which had a near-global distribution. However, as with all other non-avian dinosaurs alive at the time, the titanosaurs died out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Fossilised remains of sauropods have been found on every continent, including Antarctica; the name Sauropoda was coined by O. C. Marsh in 1878, is derived from Greek, meaning "lizard foot". Sauropods are one of the most recognizable groups of dinosaurs, have become a fixture in popular culture due to their large sizes.
Complete sauropod fossil finds are rare. Many species the largest, are known only from isolated and disarticulated bones. Many near-complete specimens lack tail tips and limbs. Sauropods were herbivorous quite long-necked quadrupeds with spatulate teeth, they had tiny heads, massive bodies, most had long tails. Their hind legs were thick and powerful, ending in club-like feet with five toes, though only the inner three bore claws, their forelimbs were rather more slender and ended in pillar-like hands built for supporting weight. Many illustrations of sauropods in the flesh miss these facts, inaccurately depicting sauropods with hooves capping the claw-less digits of the feet, or more than three claws or hooves on the hands; the proximal caudal vertebrae are diagnostic for sauropods. The sauropods' most defining characteristic was their size; the dwarf sauropods were counted among the largest animals in their ecosystem. Their only real competitors in terms of size are the rorquals, such as the blue whale.
But, unlike whales, sauropods were terrestrial animals. Their body structure did not vary as much as other dinosaurs due to size constraints, but they displayed ample variety. Some, like the diplodocids, possessed tremendously long tails, which they may have been able to crack like a whip as a signal or to deter or injure predators, or to make sonic booms. Supersaurus, at 33 to 34 metres long, was the longest sauropod known from reasonably complete remains, but others, like the old record holder, were extremely long; the holotype vertebra of Amphicoelias fragillimus may have come from an animal 58 metres long. However, a research published in 2015 speculated that the size estimates of A. fragillimus may have been exaggerated. The longest dinosaur known from reasonable fossils material is Argentinosaurus huinculensis with length estimates of 25 metres to 39.7 metres. The longest terrestrial animal alive today, the reticulated python, only reaches lengths of 6.95 metres. Others, like the brachiosaurids, were tall, with high shoulders and long necks.
Sauroposeidon was the tallest, reaching about 18 metres high, with the previous record for longest neck being held by Mamenchisaurus. By comparison, the giraffe, the tallest of all living land animals, is only 4.8 to 5.5 metres tall. The best evidence indicates that the most massive were Argentinosaurus, Alamosaurus, Antarctosaurus. There was poor evidence that so-called Bruhathkayosaurus, might have weighed over 175 metric tons but this has been questioned; the weight of Amphicoelias fragillimus was estimated at 122.4 metric tons but 2015 research argued that these estimates may have been exaggerated. The largest land animal alive today, the Savannah elephant, weighs no more than 10.4 metric tons. Among the smallest sauropods were the primitive Ohmdenosaurus, the dwarf titanosaur Magyarosaurus, the dwarf brachiosaurid Europasaurus, 6.2 meters long as a fully-grown adult. Its small stature was the result of insular dwarfism occurring in a population of sauropods isolated on an island of the late Jurassic in what is now the Langenberg area of northern Germany.
The diplodocoid sauropod Brachytrachelopan was the shortest member of its group because of its unusually short neck. Unlike other sauropods, whose necks could grow to up to four times the length of their backs, the neck of Brachytrachelopan was shorter than its backbone. On or shortly before 29 March 2017 a sauropod footprint about 5.6 feet long was found at Walmadany in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. The report said; as massive quadrupeds, sauropods developed specialized graviportal limbs. The hind feet were broad, retained three claws in most species. Unusual compared with other animals were the modified front feet; the front feet of sauropods were dissimilar from those of modern
Sanpasaurus
Sanpasaurus is a poorly known sauropod dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of Sichuan, China. The type species, S. yaoi, was described by Chung Chien Young, in 1944. The type remains, IVPP V.156, consists of 20 vertebrae, scapulae and some hindlimb bones. Reported by Young as an ornithopod ornithischian, this specimen was unambiguously referred to Sauropoda in 2016 by McPhee et al. Sansapasaurus is known from remains recovered from the Maanshan Member of the Ziliujing Formation
