Shunosaurus

Type Species: Shunosaurus lii

Classification: Dinosauria – Saurischia – Sauropoda – Gravisauria - Eusauropoda  

Time Period: Late Jurassic

Location: China

Diet: Herbivore 

The sauropod Shunosaurus is famous for the ankylosaur-like club on its tail, likely used to exact crushing blows to attacking predators or between rival males ‘squaring off’ for the right to the pluckiest females. Shunosaurus lived during the Oxfordian stage in the early part of the Late Jurassic some 160 million years ago; as it provides ninety percent of the fossils in the Dashanpu fossil beds, we can extrapolate that it was a successful dinosaur. This was a rather small sauropod, stretching only thirty feet long snout-to-tail and weighing in at just over three tons. It was one of the shortest-necked sauropods (bested only by Brachytrachelopan), so it was likely a low browser who swept its neck in wide arcs before taking a few plodding steps forward to eat another crescent-moon shaped swathe of vegetation. Fossilized skull remains are disarticulated or compressed, so whether its head was broad, short and deep or narrow and pointed is unknown. Its upper and lower jaws curved upwards so that the front of its mouth acted like garden shears to clip tough vegetation. Its cylindrical-bodied teeth were strong and elongated and ended in a spatulate tip. The end of Shunosaurus’ tail bore a cluster of two-inch long conical osteoderms that could be swung at predators.