December 4, 2025
New fossil of giant long-necked dinosaur discovered in China
Paleontologists have identified a new species of sauropod dinosaur, Mamenchisaurus sanjiangensis, from a partial skeleton discovered near Chongqing in southwest China, a finding that sheds new light on the evolution of sauropods in East Asia. The dinosaur lived during the Early Oxfordian period of the Jurassic period, about 160 million years ago. The bones were recovered from purple-red silty mudstones in the middle part of the Upper Shaximiao Formation, a well-known fossil-bearing stratum of this area. Despite being known from only a single partial skeleton, the researchers classify M. sanjiangensis as a “divergent mamenchisaurid,” closely related to other species in
