Paleontologists from the United States and China have described a new large plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now northwestern China during the early Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago.

The new dinosaur, named Yongjinglong datangi, belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as Titanosauria.

Three teeth, eight vertebrae, the left shoulder blade, the right radius and ulna of the prehistoric giant were unearthed in the Lanzhou Basin of Gansu province, northwestern China, in 2008.

Yongjinglong datangi measured about 15-18 meters long and was a medium-sized Titanosaur. However, anatomical evidence points to it being a juvenile; adults may have been larger, the scientists said.

The anatomical features of its bones bear some resemblance to another Titanosaur from China, Euhelopus zdanskyi, but the paleontologists were able to identify a number of unique characteristics.

“The shoulder blade was very long, nearly 2 meters, with sides that were nearly parallel, unlike many other Titanosaurs whose scapulae bow outward,” said Ms Liguo Li of the University of Pennsylvania, who is the lead author of a paper published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

“The scapula was so long, indeed, that it did not appear to fit in the animal’s body cavity if placed in a horizontal or vertical orientation, as is the case with other dinosaurs. The bone must have been oriented at an angle of 50 degrees from the horizontal.”

In addition, an unfused portion of the shoulder blade indicated that the specimen was a juvenile or subadult.

“The scapula and coracoid aren’t fused here. It is open, leaving potential for growth,” Ms Li said.

Thus, a full-grown adult might be larger than this 15-18-meter-long individual.

Future finds may help elucidate just how much larger.

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Li L-G et al. 2014. A New Titanosaurian Sauropod from the Hekou Group (Lower Cretaceous) of the Lanzhou-Minhe Basin, Gansu Province, China. PLoS ONE 9 (1): e85979; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0085979