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Dear Doctor Shan, I congratulate you on the acceptance of this article for publication in our journal.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Kenneth De Baets, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The Section Editor noted that the caption for Figure 2 needs to be updated "(a net ID of helper)" should state the platform and contact details or website of the artist. Please ensure you address this during production.
Dear Doctor Shan, I hope that correcting these shortcomings will allow this article to be published as soon as possible. I am waiting for the final version of this article from you.
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The manuscript has been improved compared to the previous version, but some minor issues still exist and require revision before publication.
Figure 2: Make the blue colour homogeneous across the diagram (i.e., the patch on the neck).
Figure 3: "B" is mispositioned. Make sure it is above the line drawing.
Figure 5A: Part of the bone is overexposed and can't be seen clearly, could it be fixed or rephotographed?
For the abbreviations, please arrange in alphabetical order (i.e., cb)
Figure 6: act and acet do not match. Please proofread all figures and captions.
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The revised manuscript is much more improved. However, there are still some problems that need to be clarified before acceptance.
Line 438, Why use extended implied weighting?
Line 442, You set the maximum tree to 10000, but you got more than 10000 trees.
Line 443 RI value was not correct.
The References have many problems and need to be checked again. For example:
Line 654, “Scientific Reports” should be capitalized in the first letter of each word.
Line 695. The journal was in abbreviation.
Line 736; Line 825-827. The title should be in lowercase except the first letter.
Line 741. The journal name was not correct.
Table 2. What does “PHR” mean here, Please clarify.
Table 3. What does GI mean here? Need to clarify.
Figure 2. Please remove “1 m” in the figure as you have already mentioned that the scale bar equals 1 m.
Figure 3. Scale bar rather than “scale”. Please remove letters in the photograph as you have added them in the line drawing.
Figure 4. Please check the position of “poz” . I can not see clearly. What does “vertebra fossa” mean? Neural canal? Please remove the letters in Figure A(1)
Figure 5 I think Figure 5B is possibly in posterior view. Please check again.
Finally, there are many minor grammar mistakes in the manuscript and I suggest the author could find a native speaker to improve the manuscript.
Dear Dr. Shan, I kindly request you to revise the manuscript carefully according to the reviewers' comments.
The manuscript has been improved in response to the reviewer reports. However, some minor issues still exist, and I suggest that the manuscript undergo "minor revision" before it is accepted for publication. In particular, the quality of some figures and their captions is not up to publication standards.
Figures 3-5, 7: Some of the abbreviations overlying the bones are barely readable due to low color contrast. Please modify them.
Figure 3: Some of the abbreviations in the caption do not match those in the figure (or are missing), for example, "an" and "pal." Please check and revise. Additionally, why is "lacrimal fossa" not abbreviated but written in full? It would be better if the format were consistent within the figure.
Figure 4: Some of the abbreviations in the caption do not match those in the figure (or are missing), for example, "cap."
Figure 9: Species names need to be in italics.
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See below.
See below.
See below.
The manuscript is improved than the previous version, but there are still some important things that need to be modified. As I mentioned in the last comments, I suggest the author provide a line drawing of the skull to show the bone outlines, but there are still no line drawings for the original preserved skull in Figure 3. This is important because the present skull picture is not well preserved to show bone sutures.
Please move “Materials” (Line 77) to the beginning of Line 86.
Line 91. Please mark autapomorphies of Liaoningosaurus in the diagnosis.
Line 93. “The cervical rib of the anterior vertebra is not connected to the diapophysis”. What do you mean? Is it because of the preservation? There is no discussion of this feature in the text.
Line 120. How do you identify lacrimal as this bone has been moved and not articulated with other bone? What is the distribution of lacrimal fossa in other taxa? Please added.
Line 157. Please add more discussion on how you identify these two vertebrae are posterior dorsal vertebrae.
Line 169. “The lateral surface’s pneumatic foramen (pleurocoel) is shallow”. Please mark this feature in the figure as this is a diagnosis. In addition, the shallow fossa may be caused by strongly compressed during preservation. How to eliminate the influence of preservation?
Line 179. “Lü et al” rather than “Lv et al”. Check all.
Line 147. Author’s response ‘pleurocoel isolated by a lamina’ is unusual in the middle and posterior cervical vertebrae.
This is incorrect. Pleurocoel isolated by a lamina is commonly preserved in all cervical vertebrates. See Wilson et al (2009) and Zhang et al (2018, Redescription of the cervical vertebrae of the Mamenchisaurid Sauropod Xinjiangtitan shanshanesis Wu et al. 2013).
Line 189. What does “sacral yoke” look like? Be more specific.
Line 253. As an important identification feature, the muscle scar needs to be marked in the picture.
Line 267. The author mentioned that the ridge differs from most Titanosauriformes, so is it similar to some other Titanosauriformes? Mark this ridge in the figure.
Line 431. What are the synapomorphies to support the sister taxa of Yongjinglong and Liaoningosaurus?
Line 355. Anterior process?
Line 376. The reconstructed skull looks much clearer. However, I still do not know how to reconstruct based on the preserved skull and an outline drawing of the skull and mandible is necessary.
Line 388. “the angle between the horizontal branch and ascending branch of the quadratojugal is obtuse”. This feature is different from other Euhelpidae, so why not put it as a diagnosis?
Line 599. I am a little confused about this section. The author just gives the results of his calculations and lacks discussion in the manuscript. The holotype of Liaoningosaurus is a juvenile, and do these proportions change during ontogeny? Why are only ten Titanosauriformes included? I think the data should include all known Titanosauriformes. Also, why the linear regression can reflect an autapomorphy? As the author mentioned, the holotype of Liaoningosaurus is immature, the skull length and other values should be larger, but the author only compared it to the taxa near Liaoningosaurus in the figure. I suggest either deleting this part or making a major modification.
Figure 3. Lack of line drawing of each bone outline. The position of “nf” and “aof” is not clear. I think they should be lower than the current positions according to the reconstructed skull. The black letters are not clear in the picture. There is no explanation for the letter “s”. The new Figure 3B is not clear enough to show any useful features and should be removed or replaced by more clear pictures.
Figure 4. The black letters are not clear in the picture. Please change the color of the letters.
Figure 8. It seems that there is a ventral subtriangular process of surangular, but the author did not give any description. So is this feature valid or not? Please use dotted lines if just a guess. Also, the reconstructed skull has premaxillary, maxillary, and dentary teeth. Are there any differences in size and shape? I hope the author could add more description.
Dear Dr. Shan, I kindly request you to carefully improve the manuscript according to the reviewers' comments and send the final version of the manuscript for acceptance for publication.
The scientific significance of this work is evident, but there remains considerable room for improvement in the organization of the research and the writing itself. The author appears to lack experience in scientific writing, which becomes apparent from the structure of the main text and the composition of the revision notes. There are notable issues within the article. For instance, it is unclear why the author used Malawisaurus dixeyi to reconstruct the relatively early divergence of Liaoningotitan sinensis. Moreover, in Figure 2, a reconstruction of Dreadnoughtus schrani is used to depict parts preserved in Liaoningotitan sinensis, but this is poorly explained. Additionally, the figures lack detailed information beyond captions, and abbreviations within the images are not labeled (at least, I could not find their explanations where they were expected; for example, the explanation of the nodes labeled in Figure 9 was missing). Aside from the figure titles, there is little additional explanation, leaving it unclear what each figure aims to convey. For example, I am unsure of what the regressions shown in Figures 10-12 indicate.
Through further explanation provided in the revision response, certain flaws were fixed but more in the experimental design were revealed. These include, but are not limited to, the use of Malawisaurus dixeyi to reconstruct the relatively early divergence of Liaoningotitan sinensis, the lack of detailed descriptions for each figure beyond their captions, and other issues.
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The manuscript has improved following one round of revision. However, some minor issues still have to be addressed before it is publishable.
Line 581: cite appropriate reference for the software Past 4.0.
No comment.
Figure 1: The modified version of the map is now missing a scale and orientation. Please revise the figure.
Figure 2 caption: Please clarify the second part of the caption: "edited from
Dreadnoughtus schrani of Gallipus (a net ID of helper) scale: 1 m" and make sure it is grammatical.
Line 580: "The software that conducts this research is Past 4.0." is not grammatical. It should be revised, for example, as "The analysis was conducted in the software Past 4.0".
Line 589: typo "Past4.0".
Please proofread the manuscript throughout to make sure the language is up to publication standard.
The article is generally clear. I suggest the author give some comments on the previous description (i.e., Zhou et al 2018) and explain why Liaoningotitan needs to be re-studied in the introduction section.
Research question well defined. The well preserved skull and dentition of Liaoningotitan are significant for our understanding the evolution of early Titanosauriforms.
Conclusions are well stated, but the author needs to provide data matrix of original data for review before published.
This paper re-describes the Cretaceous sauropod Liaoningotitan, which preserved partial and postcranial elements. The description is generally good, and most of the figures are well provided. However, there are still some things that need to be clarified before published. As this is a new detailed re-study of Liaoningotitan, the MS lacks comparisons with the original paper (i.e., Zhou et al. 2018). Does this MS identify some new features or find something different from the original description?
Moreover, the skull of Liaoningotitan is well preserved but lacks a detailed description and comparison. I suggest the author could provide a line drawing of the skull to show the bone outlines. Likewise, the dentition is also well preserved but lacks specific figures to show the detailed information.
Another problem is that the author lists many characters as “diagnosis” in Line 83. However, some of these are just descriptions of the skull and are not diagnosis. I suggest the author list the most important characters here. For example, are there some characters that support it to be Euhelopodidae? Does it have some autapomorphies among titanosaurians?
For all the figures, the black background looks very dark, the author could adjust them to be brighter or change to a white background.
Here are some detailed comments listed as follows:
Line 30. Lack references.
Line 32. Lack of reference here, please also cite Han et al (2024). Table 1 mainly refers to Han et al 2024.
Lines 49-56 should be moved out of the method section. Move this part after line 76.
Line 70. Why do not use an updated data matrix in 2024?
Line 109. How do you define skull overall length?
Line 110. “The length of the maxilla is three times the length of the dentigerous portion of the maxilla”. This is not clear in Figure 3. Can you show the suture between the premaxilla and maxilla?
Line 113. How do you identify the lacrimal as it has been moved outside? Is it similar to that of Euhelpodus? This needs to be clarified.
Line 116. I suggest the author provide a line drawing showing the outline of the quadratojugal and other bones.
Line 122-128. The teeth are not clear in Figure 1. Please provide a new figure showing the morphology of the dentition.
Line 134. How do you identify the anterior cervical vertebra?
Line 147. Can you mark “a” and “b” in Figure 4? The photographs of the dorsal vertebrae are not very clear. A line drawing of the dorsal vertebrae would be helpful for understanding.
Line 268. Pelvic girdle instead of “Shoulder strap”. Change “forefoot” to “manus” “A-D” in which view?
Line 301. It is unnecessary to mark A, B, C in Figure 6.
Line 346 Figure 7. In which view of all the bones? In anterior view or lateral view? Please clarify.
Line 333, 347. Please change “handfoot” to “pes”.
Figure 1. This map is too rough and could not show the detailed position of the fossil site. I suggest the author provide a new detailed map to clarify the fossil site.
Figure 3. The photograph is not very clear. A line drawing should be provided here.
The manuscript needs revision and editing. Illustrations should be checked very carefully by the author. For example, in figure 2 the height of the person is about 140 cm. The design of the literature has numerous deviations from the requirements of the journal. I hope that the manuscript will be improved and can be published in our journal.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: The review process has identified that the English language MUST be improved. PeerJ can provide language editing services if you wish - please contact us at [email protected] for pricing (be sure to provide your manuscript number and title). Your revision deadline is always extended while you undergo language editing. #]
This article provides an thorough and in-depth osteological re-description of Liaoningotitan sinensis and refines its phylogenetic position and autapomorphic features. The language is generally acceptable, although some sentences appear to have been translated using software, resulting in less fluent phrasing. While there are some grammatical issues in certain sections, they do not hinder comprehension.
Here are some specific suggestions：
1. Title: The word "Restudy" might be replaced with "Re-examination" or "Re-description" to emphasize the detailed or revised nature of the research. Additionally, providing more information about the focus of the study (e.g., "osteology," "phylogeny") could make the title more informative. I suggest adjusting the title to "Re-description of Liaoningotitan sinensis (Sauropoda, Titanosauria)".
2. Line 62, Somphospondyli
3.Line 126: states that five posterior cervical vertebrae are supposed to be preserved, but only four are highlighted in green in Figure 2.
4. Line 507, there is an extra space.
5. Line 406: When discussing the autapomorphic characters, could you please indicate which specific character in your character list or data matrix they refer to?
I did not double-check the data matrix nor reexamine the phylogenetic analysis, so I do not have other comments regarding this section.
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The English can be improved. I made some suggestions n the PDF file
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I have a couple of issues here:
1. Estimated lenght of this titanosauriform is based on a mamenchisaurid. That sounds odd.
2. Graphs captions are incomplete. Moreover, sometimes the author mention one genus as close when another one is closer.
-The use of lauguage has to be improved throughout the manuscript to improve readability and ensure the accurate use of jargon. For example, line 5, should be revised as "one of the three sauropod species".
-Citations are missing in the first paragraph of the Introduction (except for the last sentence). Please cite published literature in appropriate places.
-The structure of the article needs to be revised as some paragraphs/texts are currently placed inappropriately. For example, the last paragraph of the Introduction would fit better in the Methods/Materials sectionl; part of the Phylogenetic Analysis paragraph (ie technical details) would better fit in the Methods section; results of the Skull Height: Length Ratio would better fit in the Results section, but not the Discussion.
-Methods: the first paragraph is identical to part of the abstract, please rephrase.
-Figures: please refer and mention the figure in appropriate places in the text. Currently, the figures are not mentioned anywhere.
-Figure 2: to my knowledge, the skeleton featured is not Liaoningotitan?
-The research is within the scope of the journal and the knowledge gap it addresses is clear.
-As mentioned above, some of the Methods are scattered around the text but not inside the Methods section. Please ensure all technical details relevant to methods are placed in the right places, and that the results are presented in the results section.
-The osteological description presented herein is detailed, but some of the features described cannot be seen in any of the figures. It would be beneficial to provide more hi-res images of the holotype specimens, especially the skull. As stated by the author, this specimen is one of the few well-preserved sauropod specimens that includes a quite-well-preserved skull. I would like to see more closeup images, in particular the dentition.
-Please make sure the data matrix used in the phylogenetic analysis will be available somewhere online when the paper is published.
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