Tongnanlong
Tongnanlong was a gigantic, long-necked plant-eater that lived in what is now China. It was one of the biggest dinosaurs of its time, with a body as long as a basketball court! Scientists think it used its huge size to reach high leaves that other dinosaurs couldn't eat.1
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Fun facts
Tongnanlong's name honors the famous Chinese paleontologist Dong Zhiming, who studied many dinosaurs from the Sichuan Basin.1
The only known fossil includes three back vertebrae, six tail vertebrae, a shoulder blade, and some leg bones.1
Its shoulder blade and coracoid (a shoulder bone) are huge, showing it was an extremely large sauropod.1
Tongnanlong lived during the Late Jurassic period, about 161 to 143 million years ago.3
The fossil was found in purplish red sandstone, which was once a lakeshore or shallow lake environment.1
Tongnanlong is a mamenchisaurid, a group of long-necked sauropods that were common in Asia during the Jurassic.1
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Tongnanlong
- Named by
- Wei et al. 20253
- Group
- Long-necks
- Family / clade
- Mamenchisauridae3
- Classification
- Sauropodomorpha > Sauropoda3
- Age of the rocks
- 162 to 143 million years (Oxfordian / Tithonian)3
- Rock formations
- Suining3
- Countries
- China3
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
- Discovery
- Tongnanlong was discovered in 1998 at a building site in Tongnan District, Chongqing, China. It was named in 2025 by a team of scientists led by Xuefang Wei.1
- Still debated
- Scientists are not sure whether the Suining Formation, where Tongnanlong was found, belongs to the Late Jurassic or the Early Cretaceous. Most evidence points to the Late Jurassic.1
Where the facts come from
- A new mamenchisaurid from the Upper Jurassic Suining Formation of the Sichuan Basin in China and its implication on sauropod gigantism | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
- Tongnanlong (en.wikipedia.org)
- Tongnanlong in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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