Dino card No. 1563 of 2,027

Ruixinia

Say it: roo-EE-shee-nee-ah

Name means: “Ruixin's, after Ruixin Zhang who helped the museum”1

Ate: PlantsLong-necksEarly Cretaceous

Ruixinia was a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now China. It had a very long tail with at least 52 bones, and the last few tail bones were fused together into a rod-like tip.1

Lived

126 to 120 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning Province, China1 2

Food

Plants2

Length

12 m1 2

estimated

Weight

4 tonnes3

estimate, largest known specimen

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 2.5 cars

as long as 2.5 cars parked in a rowas long as 67 bananas end to endas heavy as 130 big dogsas heavy as 800 watermelons

How big was Ruixinia compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Ruixinia's neck was over 4 meters long and had at least 15 neck bones, similar to other long-necked dinosaurs like Euhelopus and Mamenchisaurus.1

Its tail contained at least 52 vertebrae, and the last few were fused into a rod-like structure, a rare feature only seen in some Jurassic Asian sauropods.1

The chevron bone of the 20th tail vertebra had a pentagonal (five-sided) shape, which is unusual.1

Ruixinia lived alongside two other sauropods, Dongbeititan and Liaoningotitan, in the Jehol Biota ecosystem.1

Scientists disagree about whether Ruixinia was a titanosaur or a euhelopodid, because different studies place it in different groups.1

AI-made picture of Ruixinia — An AI-made picture of how Ruixinia 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.

Ask Rex about Ruixinia

Rex only answers questions about this page. 3 questions a day.

Rex is an AI and can make mistakes. He runs on servers in the EU and questions are never saved. Never type your name or other personal things.

For dino experts

Scientific name: Ruixinia
Named by: Mo et al. 20234
Group: Long-necks
Family / clade: Euhelopodidae4
Classification: Sauropodomorpha > Sauropoda > Macronaria4
Age of the rocks: 126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)4
Rock formations: Yixian4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Ruixinia was named in 2022 by Jinyou Mo and colleagues, based on a partial skeleton found in the Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China. The species name honors Ruixin Zhang, who helped the Erlianhaote Dinosaur Museum.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Ruixinia was a titanosaur or a euhelopodid, because different studies place it in different dinosaur family trees.1

Where the facts come from

Ruixinia (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Ruixinia zhangi | Dinosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
Ruixinia 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.

Rex is hungry! Dino Wiki is a dad's project for his dino-loving son, free with no ads. Grown-ups can feed Rex a snack to help keep it online.Feed Rex