Dino card No. 1577 of 2,027

Sanpasaurus

Say it: san-pah-SORE-us

Name means: “Sanpa lizard”1

Ate: PlantsLong-necksEarly Jurassic

Sanpasaurus was a long-necked dinosaur that munched on plants during the Early Jurassic. It lived in what is now China, and scientists used to think it was a different kind of dinosaur. Now they know it was an early sauropod, a relative of giants like Brachiosaurus.1 2

Lived

184 to 175 million years ago4

Early Jurassic

Fossils found in

Sichuan Province, China1 2

Food

Plants4

Length

up to 7.2 m3

largest known specimen

Weight

up to 1.1 tonnes3

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 37 big dogs

as long as 7 dogs nose to tailas long as 40 bananas end to endas heavy as 220 watermelons

How big was Sanpasaurus compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Sanpasaurus was first thought to be an ornithopod dinosaur, but later studies showed it was actually a sauropod.1 2

The fossils of Sanpasaurus include 20 vertebrae, shoulder blades, forelimbs, and some hindlimb bones.1

Sanpasaurus lived about 183 million years ago, during the Early Jurassic period.1

Scientists think Sanpasaurus was a small-bodied sauropod, possibly a juvenile.2

Sanpasaurus had a special feature on its back vertebrae: thin ridges on the sides of the neural arches.2

The name Sanpasaurus comes from 'Sanpa', an old name for the area in China where it was found.1

AI-made picture of Sanpasaurus — An AI-made picture of how Sanpasaurus 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 Sanpasaurus was a type of ornithopod dinosaur.

Truth: Scientists now know it was a sauropod, based on detailed studies of its bones.1 2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Sanpasaurus
Named by: Young 19444
Group: Long-necks
Family / clade: Sauropoda4
Classification: Sauropodomorpha > Sauropoda4
Age of the rocks: 184 to 175 million years (Toarcian)4
Rock formations: Ziliujing4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 3 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Sanpasaurus was named by Chinese paleontologist Chung Chien Young in 1944. The fossils were found in 1939 near Weiyuan City in Sichuan, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly where Sanpasaurus fits in the sauropod family tree, and whether some other fossils belong to it.2

Where the facts come from

Sanpasaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
A revision of Sanpasaurus yaoi Young, 1944 from the Early ... (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Sanpasaurus yaoi | Dinosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
Sanpasaurus 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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