Evolutionary and biogeographic analyses including the new species now suggest that neosauropods were already diverse and widespread in the Middle Jurassic (about 174 to 163 million years ago), rather than rapidly becoming dominant at the transition to the Late Jurassic (163 to 145 million years ago) as previously thought. That surprising discovery is what inspired the dinosaur’s name, as the researchers write in their paper: “Lingwu, after the region where the specimens were found; long, the Mandarin Chinese for ‘dragon’; and shenqi, the Mandarin Chinese for ‘amazing’, reflecting the unexpected discovery of a dicraeosaurid in the Middle Jurassic of China.” Altogether, it’s the “amazing dragon of Lingwu.”

And though it’s often difficult to guess what a dinosaur looked like or how it behaved based on a fossil, Mannion had some ideas. Named Lingwulong shenqi — which translates to “amazing dragon from Lingwu,” the closest Chinese city to the site where the fossils were unearthed — these creatures represent the earliest known members of the long-necked sauropods that walked the Earth 174 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period (end of the Early Jurassic and the beginning of the Middle Jurassic). The scientists excavated bones from at least eight to 10 Lingwulong individuals, the largest of which was about 57 feet long, paleontologist Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who led the study published in the journal Nature Communications, told Reuters. BABY SNAKE FROM THE TIME OF THE DINOSAURS FOUND 'FROZEN' IN AMBER

“Previously, we thought all of these advanced sauropods originated around 160 million years ago and rapidly diversified and spread across the planet in a time window perhaps as short as 5 million years,” said University College London paleontologist Paul Upchurch, a study co-author. In addition, he also added that but the discovery of "Lingwulong means that this hypothesis is incorrect and we now have to work with the idea that, actually, this group and its major constituent lineages originated somewhat earlier and more gradually."
Researchers at the Imperial College London report the discovery of the Lingwulong genus, a subgroup of Sauropods that lived in China about 174 million years ago, which is 15 million years earlier than any previously-known member of the group.