Huanghetitan

Huanghetitan (meaning "Yellow River titan"), is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period. It was a basal titanosauriform which lived in what is now Gansu, China.

The type species, Huanghetitan liujiaxiaensis, was described by You et al. in 2006. It is known from fragmentary materials including two caudal vertebrae, an almost complete sacrum, rib fragments, and the left shoulder girdle, and was discovered in the eastern part of the Lanzhou Basin (Hekou group) in the Gansu Province in 2004.[1]

A second species, H. ruyangensis, was described in 2007 from the Aptian-Albian Haoling Formation of Ruyang County, China (Henan Province). A recent cladistic analysis has found that this species is (or more likely) not related to H. liujiaxiaensis and even requires a new genus name.[2] It is known from a partial vertebral column and several ribs, the size of which (the largest approaches 3 m (10 ft)) indicate it had among the deepest body cavities of any known dinosaur.[3] This second species, along with its local relatives Daxiatitan and Ruyangosaurus, is one of the biggest dinosaurs ever found in Asia, and possibly one of the largest in the world.

In 2007, Lü Junchang et al. created a new family for Huanghetitan, the Huangetitanidae, but this family found to be polyphyletic by Mannion et al.[3][2]