Euhelopus

true marsh foot

• eu · Greek · true, good
• helos · Greek · marsh
• pous · Greek · foot

Euhelopus means "true marsh foot". It was a replacement name: the sauropod was first called Helopus ("marsh foot") by Wiman in 1929, but that name was already used for a bird, so Romer introduced Euhelopus in 1956, adding the Greek prefix "eu" (true, good) to keep the original sense. The "marsh foot" idea reflects an early assumption that big sauropods lived in swampy habitats.

Named by

Romer

Year named

1956

Period

Early Cretaceous

Found in

Mengyin Formation, Shandong Province, China

A long-necked sauropod. The type species is Euhelopus zdanskyi (originally Helopus zdanskyi Wiman, 1929). The age of the Mengyin Formation has been debated, and some older sources place it in the Late Jurassic. Exact stages are therefore left out.