Jainosaurus

Jainosaurus is a large titanosaurian dinosaur of India and wider Asia, which lived in the Maastrichtian (approximately 68 million years ago). A herbivorous quadruped, an adult Jainosaurus would have measured around eighteen metres long and held its head six metres high. No accurate estimate of the weight has yet been made. The humerus of the type specimen is 134 centimetres long.

The specific name of J. septentrionalis means "northern" in Latin, a reference to the fact that the species was discovered on the Northern hemisphere whereas Antarctosaurus means "saurian from the Southern hemisphere" because its type species Antarctosaurus wichmannianus was found in Argentina.The generic name honours the Indian paleontologist Sohan Lal Jain, who worked on the cranial nerve impressions in the skull; and in 1982 published a study about the results. Ironically, Jain himself considered the remains synonymous with Titanosaurus in the 1997 description of Isisaurus. However, Wilson and Upchurch (2003) rejected the synonymy of Jainosaurus and Titanosaurus due to the dubious status of the latter.

The type species of Jainosaurus, J. septentrionalis has a long and complex taxonomic history closely connected to the history of the problematic genera Titanosaurus and Antarctosaurus. The first remains were between 1917 and 1920 found by Charles Alfred Matley near Jabalpur in the Lameta Formation. These were named Antarctosaurus septentrionalis by Friedrich von Huene and Matley in 1933.