Chinese sauropod info

["Matthew Bonnan" <mbonnan@hotmail.com>]

As I promised, here are the Upchurch refs:

Upchurch, P. 1995. The evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs. Phil. 
Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 349: 365-390.

Upchurch, P. 1998. The phylogenetic relationships of sauropod dinosaurs. 
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 124: 43-103.

Upchurch, P. 1999. The phylogenetic relationships of the Nemegtosauridae 
(Saurischia, Saruopoda). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 19(1): 106-125.

Upchurch propsed a Eusauropoda which comprises all sauropods above 
Vulcanodontidae (Barapasaurus, Ohmdenosaurus, Vulcanodon, Zizhongosaurus) 
and incorporates both the Euhelopodidae and Cetiosauridae as outgroups to 
the Neosauropoda, which includes all other sauropods.

According to Upchurch, his Euhelopodidae contains the following genera: 
Datousaurus, Euhelopus, Mamenchisaurus, Omeisaurus, Shunosaurus.  Upchurch 
considers the tail club in Shunosaurus to be an autoapomorphy rather than a 
synapomorphy of the Euhelopodidae.

Here are the seven synapomorphies Upchurch has used to justify Euhelopodid 
monophyly:

1. Caudal end of the prefrontal is triangular in dorsal view (convergently 
acquired in Diplodocidae); 2. 13 cervical vertebrae (convergently acquired 
in Brachiosaurus and Diplodocidae); 3. Laterally compressed cranial cervical 
vertebrae; 4. Centroparapophyseal lamina on middle and caudal dorsal neural 
arches (absent in some euhelopodids; convergently acquired in the 
Neosauropoda); 5. cranial process on middle and distal chevrons 
(convergently acquired in the dicraeosaurid-diplodocid clade); 6. Ventral 
midline slit on middle and distal chevrons (convergently acquired in the 
dicraeosaurid-diplodocid clade); 7. Prominent parasagittally oriented ridge 
on the dorsal surface of the sternal plate.

I encourage anyone interested to look up these articles and read them for a 
somewhat different and interesting view on sauropod evolution.

Matt Bonnan

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