Skip to content
Surf Wiki
Save to docs
general/macronaria

From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Euhelopodidae

Extinct family of dinosaurs


Summary

Extinct family of dinosaurs

  • Helopodidae Wiman, 1929
  • Daxiatitan?
  • Erketu
  • Euhelopus
  • Gannansaurus?
  • Gobititan?
  • Huabeisaurus?
  • Jiangshanosaurus
  • Liaoningotitan
  • Phuwiangosaurus
  • Qiaowanlong
  • Ruixinia?
  • Silutitan
  • Tambatitanis?
  • Tangvayosaurus
  • Yongjinglong
  • Yunmenglong
  • Mamenchisauridae?

Euhelopodidae is a family of sauropod dinosaurs of disputed membership and affinities, which contains Euhelopus and its close relatives. Most proposed euhelopodids are from East Asia.

Euhelopodidae was first recognized by Carl Wiman in 1929, under the name Helopodidae, as Euhelopus was originally named Helopus. However, the name had already been proposed for a bird, so in 1956 Alfred Sherwood Romer proposed the name Euhelopus and Euhelopodinae as replacements; Romer classified Euhelopodinae as a subfamily of Brachiosauridae, in which he also included Camarasaurinae and Cetiosaurinae, rather than as a family of its own. In addition to Euhelopus itself, Romer included Chiayusaurus, Omeisaurus, and Tienshanosaurus in Euhelopodinae.

The taxonomic content of Euhelopodidae is uncertain, as a result of the unstable position of Euhelopus itself. Some studies have concluded that Euhelopus is a non-neosauropod closely related to Mamenchisaurus, which would make Euhelopodidae equivalent to Mamenchisauridae. Other studies have interpreted Euhelopus as neosauropod united with titanosaurs in Somphospondyli. A joint study by Jeffrey Wilson and Paul Upchurch, who had previously taken opposite sides in the debate, concluded that Euhelopus was closely related to titanosaurs. However, the lack of research on Mamenchisaurus-like taxa has hindered proper testing of this hypothesis, and there are several similarities between Euhelopus and Mamenchisaurus-like taxa that have not been taken into account in most analyses.

Michael D'Emic (2012) formulated the first phylogenetic definition of Euhelopodidae, defining it as the clade containing "neosauropods more closely related to Euhelopus zdanskyi than to Neuquensaurus australis". Below is a cladogram presenting the cladistic hypothesis of Euhelopodidae proposed by D'Emic.

In their 2021 description of Silutitan, Wang et al. recovered it as a derived euhelopodid, as the sister taxon to Euhelopus. The results of their phylogenetic analysis, which included several other euhelopodid taxa, are shown in the cladogram below:

|{{clade

References

References

  1. (2021). "The first dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Hami Pterosaur Fauna, China". Scientific Reports.
  2. D'Emic, Michael D.. (2012). "The early evolution of titanosauriform sauropod dinosaurs". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
  3. (2020-05-28). "Osteology of Klamelisaurus gobiensis (Dinosauria, Eusauropoda) and the evolutionary history of Middle–Late Jurassic Chinese sauropods". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
  4. Romer, A. S.. (1956). "Osteology of the Reptiles". University of Chicago Press.
  5. Wiman, Carl. (1929). "Die Kreide-Dinosaurier aus Shantung". Palaeontologia Sinica.
  6. (2009). "Redescription and reassessment of the phylogenetic affinities of Euhelopus zdanskyi (Dinosauria: Sauropoda) from the early cretaceous of China". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Euhelopodidae — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report