JANENSCHIA
a plant-eating titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of Tanzania.
Pronunciation: yah-NEN-shee-uh
Meaning: for Werner Janensch
Author/s: Rupert Wild (
1991)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Tanzania, East Africa
Discovery Chart Position: #359
Janenschia robusta
(Janensch's Robust One)Etymology
Janenschia is named in honour of Werner Janensch.
The
species epithet,
robusta, refers to its robust build.
Discovery
The remains of
Janenschia were discovered in the Upper Dinosaur Member ("Upper Saurian Bed") of the Tendaguru Formation, Lindi District, southeastern Tanzania, by Eberhard Fraas in 1907.
The
holotype (SMNS 12144), from Quarry B about 900 m southeast of Tendaguru Hill, is a right hindlimb that includes part of the thigh, shin, calf, ankle, and a complete foot. Additional bones from the same quarry include two pelvic bones—a left pubis (MB.R.2090.2 [B8]) and a right ischium (MB.R.2090.4 [B13])—plus the lower half of a left shin (MB.R.2090.1 [B6]). A second, slightly larger right ischium (MB.R.2090.3 [B11]) suggests another individual was present. More bones, including forelimb and hindlimb elements (MB.R.2095, 2245, and 2707), were collected from Quarry P at Nterego, 1.2 km northeast of Tendaguru Hill, though several of these pieces have since been lost.
In 1929, Werner Janensch assigned a series of 30 tail vertebrae (MB.R.2091.1–30) from Quarry G, along with two back vertebrae (MB.R.2092.1–2, NB4 and NB5) from the Nambango site NB, about 15 km southeast of Tendaguru Hill, to this species—stubbornly insisting on calling it
Gigantosaurus robustus. The former was renamed
Wamweracaudia keranjei by Mannion and colleagues exactly 90 years later, while the latter found their own identity as
Tendaguria tanzaniensis, thanks to Bonaparte, Heinrich, and Wild in 2000.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Jurassic
Stage: Tithonian
Age range: 151-145 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 20 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 16 tons
Diet: Herbivore
Gigantosaurus robustus (Fraas, 1908)
Tornieria robusta (Sternfeld, 1911)
Barosaurus robustus (Haughton, 1928)
References
• Seeley HG (1869) "
Gigantosaurus megalonyx, a terrestrial reptile from the Kimeridge Clay".
Page 94-95 in "Index to the Fossil Remains of Aves, Ornithosauria, and Reptilia from the Secondary System of Strata, arranged in the Woodwardian Museum of the University of Cambridge".
• Lydekker R (1888) "
Catalogue of the Fossil Reptilia and Amphibia in the British Museum (Natural History). Part I. Containing the Orders Ornithosauria, Crocodilia, Dinosauria, Squamata, Rhynchocephalia, and Proterosauria".
British Museum (Natural History), London, 1-309.
• Fraas E (1908) "Dinosaurierfunde in Ostafrika [Discoveries of dinosaurs in German East Africa]".
Jahreshefte des Vereins für Vaterländische Naturkunde in Württemberg 64: 84-86.
• Sternfeld R (1911) "Zur Nomenklatur der Gattung
Gigantosaurus Fraas" [On the nomenclature of the genus
Gigantosaurus Fraas].
Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin 1911: 398.
• Janensch W (1922) "Das Handskelett von
Gigantosaurus robustus und
Brachiosaurus brancai aus den Tendaguru-Schichten Deutsch-Ostafrikas".
Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie 1922: 464-480.
• Haughton SH (1928) "On some reptilian remains from the Dinosaur Beds of Nyasaland".
Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 16: 67-75. DOI: 10.1080/00359192809519658.
• Janensch W (1929) "Material und Formegehalt der Sauropoden in der Ausbeute der
Tendaguru-Expedition, 1909-1912.
Palaeontographica, Supplement VII, 2: 3–34.
• Wild R (1991) "
Janenschia n. g. robusta (E. Fraas 1908) pro
Tornieria robusta (E. Fraas 1908) (Reptilia, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha)"
[
Janenschia n. g. robusta (E. Fraas 1908) for
Tornieria robusta (E. Fraas 1908) (Reptilia, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha)].
Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde, Serie B (Geologie und Paläontologie), 173: 1-4.
• Heinrich W-D (1999) "The taphonomy of dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of Tendaguru
(Tanzania) based on field sketches of the German Tendaguru Expedition (1909-
1913)".
Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaften Reihe, 2: 25–61.
• Bonaparte JF, Heinrich W-D and Wild R (2000) "Review of
Janenschia Wild, with the description of a new sauropod from the Tendaguru beds of Tanzania and a discussion on the systematic value of procoelous caudal vertebrae in the Sauropoda".
Palaeontographica Abteilung A. 256 (1-3): 25-76. DOI: 10.1127/pala/256/2000/25
• Maier G (2003) "
African dinosaurs unearthed: the Tendaguru expeditions".
• Mannion PD, Upchurch P, Schwarz D and Oliver Wings O (2019) "Taxonomic affinities of the putative titanosaurs from the Late Jurassic Tendaguru Formation of Tanzania: phylogenetic and biogeographic implications for eusauropod dinosaur evolution".
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 185(3): 784-909. DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zly068
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JANENSCHIA :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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