Jiutaisaurus

Jiutai lizard

• Jiutai · Chinese · Jiutai (a city in Jilin Province, China)
• saurus · Greek · lizard

The name combines "Jiutai," a city in Jilin Province, northeastern China, with the Greek word "saurus" meaning "lizard." It was named in honor of the locality near where the fossils were discovered. The "-saurus" suffix is the standard Latinized Greek suffix used for dinosaur genus names.

Named by

Wu et al.

Year named

2006

Period

Early Cretaceous

Stage

Aptian

Found in

Quantou Formation, Jilin Province, China

Jiutaisaurus is a sauropod dinosaur known only from eighteen isolated vertebrae. It is generally considered a nomen dubium because the material is too fragmentary to confidently diagnose the genus or distinguish it from other sauropods. It was originally referred to the Euhelopodidae or a related group of Asian sauropods.