Their hind legs were thick, straight, and powerful, ending in club-like feet with five toes, though only the inner three (or in some cases four) bore claws. They had tiny heads, massive bodies, and most had long tails. Sauropods were herbivorous (plant-eating), usually quite long-necked quadrupeds (four-legged), often with spatulate (spatula-shaped: broad at the tip, narrow at the neck) teeth. Many near-complete specimens lack heads, tail tips and limbs. Many species, especially the largest, are known only from isolated and disarticulated bones. Sauropods are one of the most recognizable groups of dinosaurs, and have become a fixture in popular culture due to their impressive size.Ĭomplete sauropod fossil finds are rare. The name Sauropoda was coined by Othinel Charles Marsh in 1878, and is derived from Ancient Greek, meaning 'lizard foot'. Fossilised remains of sauropods have been found on every continent, including Antarctica. However, as with all other non-avian dinosaurs alive at the time, the titanosaurs died out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

By the Late Cretaceous, one group of sauropods, the titanosaurs, had replaced all others and had a near-global distribution. By the Late Jurassic (150 million years ago), sauropods had become widespread (especially the diplodocids and brachiosaurids). Sauropod-like sauropodomorph tracks from the Fleming Fjord Formation ( Greenland) might, however, indicate the occurrence of the group in the Late Triassic. Isanosaurus and Antetonitrus were originally described as Triassic sauropods, but their age, and in the case of Antetonitrus also its sauropod status, were subsequently questioned. The oldest known unequivocal sauropod dinosaurs are known from the Early Jurassic. Well-known genera include Brachiosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus. They are notable for the enormous sizes attained by some species, and the group includes the largest animals to have ever lived on land. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their body), and four thick, pillar-like legs. Sauropoda ( / s ɔː ˈ r ɒ p ə d ə/), whose members are known as sauropods ( / ˈ s ɔːr ə p ɒ d z/ from sauro- + -pod, ' lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Mounted skeleton of Apatosaurus louisae, Carnegie Museum

Prehistoric kingdom argentinosaurus