In Depth
Datanglong was a mid to large sized theropod dinosaur that lived in China during the early Cretaceous period. At the time of its description only the hip bones and dorsal vertebrae are known for this dinosaur, so we have to take a best guess as to what this dinosaur looked like. Unfortunately Datanglong was not named long before controversy over its identification set in. The original describers identified Datanglong as a carcharodontosaur, a type of large theropod dinosaur that was particularly common during the early Cretaceous. From this comparison to other carcharodontosaurs led to an estimated size of Datanglong of seven to eight meters in length. Soon after however another palaeontologist named Andrea Cau published a paper citing that the original cladistic analysis was too heavily focused upon basal tetanuran theropods. Cau then stated that the features on the Datanglong holotype share more in common with the coelurosaurs, and perhaps may be a megaraptoran theropod going bay the arrangement of the hip given that the features used to identify Datanglong as a carcharodontosaur are also featured within the members Megaraptora.
Datanglong can be broken down to English as ‘Datang dragon’, a reference to the Datang basin where the holotype specimen was discovered. The species name guangxiensis simply means ‘from Guangxi’, a province in China.
Further Reading
- A New Carcharodontosauria (Theropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of Guangxi, Southern China.- Acta Geologica Sinica 1 (88 (4). 1051-1059 - Jinyou Mo, Fusheng Zhou, Guang Ning Li, Zhen Hunag & Chenyun Cao - 2014. – Datanglong: un nuovo carcharodontosauriano? (Italian) [Datanlong: a new carcharodontosaur?]. Theropoda - Andrea Cau - 2014.
