New titanosaur, Gandititan, from the middle Cretaceous of China

[VD231991]

Paper here:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14772019.2023.2293038

The most noteworthy thing about the paper describing Gandititan is that a cladistic analysis of Titanosauria places this taxon along with Abdarainurus, Andesaurus, Baotianmansaurus, Dongyangosaurus, and Huabeisaurus in a clade of non-lithostrotian titanosaurs, confirming suggestions that Abdarainurus is a late-surviving titanosaur becauses its caudal vertebrae have non-procoelous articulations and implying that basal titanosaurs dispersed between Asia and South America during the middle Cretaceous. An abstract presented by John D'Angelo at the SVP 2022 conference mentions unpublished results of a titanosaur cladistic analysis recovering Baotianmansaurus, Erketu, Huabeisaurus, Sonidosaurus, Tambatitanis, Abdarainurus, Dongyangosaurus, and various other Asian taxa, so future study could see Huabeisauridae utilized for a subclade of the titanosaur clade recovered by Han et al., either as a separate family or a subfamily of Andesauridae.