Dino card No. 0780 of 2,027

Hamititan

Say it: HAM-ee-TYE-tan

Name means: “Hami giant, named after Hami city in China where it was found”1

Ate: PlantsLong-necksEarly Cretaceous

Hamititan was a huge, long-necked plant eater that stomped around China about 130 million years ago. It had a very long tail made of special bones. Scientists know it from just a few tail bones, but they think it was as long as a big bus!1 3

Lived

137 to 133 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Hami, Xinjiang, China, in the Shengjinkou Formation1 3

Food

Plants3

Length

up to 17 m1

estimated by comparing its tail bones to other titanosaurs

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 4 cars parked in a rowas long as 94 bananas end to end

How big was Hamititan compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Hamititan is known from only seven tail bones and three chevrons, which are bones that help support the tail.1 3

Its tail bones were procoelous, meaning they were cup-shaped at the front and ball-shaped at the back, which made the tail flexible and strong.2

A small theropod tooth was found right next to Hamititan's tail bones, suggesting a meat-eating dinosaur may have nibbled on its carcass.1

Hamititan lived in the same place as the pterosaur Hamipterus, which flew in the skies above. But Hamititan was a dinosaur, not a pterosaur.1

The name Hamititan comes from Hami city and the word titan, which means a giant from Greek myths.1

Hamititan was a titanosaur, a group of sauropods known for their huge size and wide bodies.1

AI-made picture of Hamititan — An AI-made picture of how Hamititan might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Hamititan was a pterosaur because it was found in the Hami Pterosaur Fauna.

Truth: Hamititan was a sauropod dinosaur, not a pterosaur. Pterosaurs are flying reptiles, not dinosaurs.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Hamititan
Named by: Wang et al. 20213
Group: Long-necks
Family / clade: Titanosauria3
Classification: Sauropodomorpha > Sauropoda > Titanosauria > Macronaria3
Age of the rocks: 137 to 133 million years (Valanginian)3
Rock formations: Shengjinkou3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Hamititan was found by the Hami field team of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in 2013, in the Hami region of Xinjiang, China. It was named by Wang and colleagues in 2021.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how long Hamititan was, because they only have tail bones. The 17 metre estimate is based on comparing with other titanosaurs.1

Where the facts come from

The first dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Hami Pterosaur Fauna, China | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
The first dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Hami Pterosaur Fauna, China (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Hamititan in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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