Silly Sauropodomorphs of Space

This is the last week of November and therefore it is the week of the calendar creature. This month that animal is the sauropodomorph Yunnanosaurus. Discovered originally in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan and described in 1942 by C. C. Young (the anglicized name of Chinese paleontologist Yang Zhongjian). The original fossil material consisted of twenty incomplete skeletons of the facultatively bipedal sauropodomorph dinosaur. Two species are recognized: Y. huangi Young 1942, and Y. youngi Lu, et al. 2007. The teeth of Yunnanosaurus may be the dinosaur's most interesting feature, as we shall see later in the week; however, its position early in dinosaur evolution is also interesting and we may learn a lot about early dinosaur environments from studying this animal over the week.