Euhelopus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 145 and 133 million years ago during the Berriasian and Valanginian ages of the Early Cretaceous[1] in what is now Shandong Province in China.

This discovery was paleontologically significant because it represented the first dinosaur scientifically investigated from China: seen in 1913, rediscovered in 1922, and excavated in 1923 and studied by T'an during the same year.

In 2016, Gregory S. Paul estimated the weight at 3.5 tonnes (3.9 tons) and the body length at 11 metres (36 feet).

According to a study by Jeffrey A. Wilson and Paul Upchurch in 2009, Euhelopus can be distinguished based on, among others, these autapomorphies:[1] The original discovery was by a Catholic priest, Father R. Mertens, in 1913.

He showed some remains he had excavated to the German mining engineer Gustav Behaghel who in 1916 sent three vertebrae to the head of the Geological Survey of China Ding Wenjiang ("V.K.

With help of another Catholic priest, Father Alfred Kaschel, the site was rediscovered in November 1922 by Johan Gunnar Andersson and Tan Xichou.

In March 1923, the Austrian student Otto Zdansky excavated two skeletons at sites about three kilometres apart and the holotype was studied by H. C. T'an, also in 1923.

[11] The name refers to the marshy area of the finds and to truga, Swedish swamp shoes, which according to Wiman resembled the wide feet of the animal.

[11] Specimen PMU 24705 consists of a partial skeleton with skull and lower jaws comprising these bones: the rostral part of the left nasal; a partial right jugal; the tapered jugal process of the postorbital, partially excavated; the dorsal process of the right quadratojugal; the fragmented left pterygoid (another fragment might be the right splenial, but it is too fragile to be removed from its matrix),[3] a series of twenty-five presacral vertebrae and the left thighbone.

Young assigned all of these remains to Euhelopus zdanskyi except the incomplete right coracoid, and suggested that they probably belonged to the type specimen.

[13] Yang and Bien's scapulocoracoid and humerus and Ting's vertebrae were designated "exemplar c" by Wilson & Upchurch in 2009.

Traditional claims that Euhelopus, Omeisaurus, Mamenchisaurus and Shunosaurus form the monophyletic family “Euhelopodidae” are not supported by new phylogenetic analysis.

[19] It was previously regarded as having been deposited during the Barremian or Aptian stages of the Cretaceous period, about 129 to 113 million years ago.