Tianzhenosaurus
| Tianzhenosaurus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Tianzhenosaurus youngi |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
| 72 to 66 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Tianzhenosaurus | ||||||||||||
| Pang & Cheng , 1998 |
Tianzhenosaurus was a genus of pelvic dinosaurs from the group of Ankylosauria . She livedin East Asiaat the end of the Upper Cretaceous .
features
Tianzhenosaurus was a rather smaller representative of the ankylosaurs, its length is estimated to be 4 meters. Its physique resembles Saichania , but only reaches 60% of its size. The skull (28 centimeters long) was wide and ended in a toothless horned beak. On the back of the head and on the cheek he wore two bony thorns, the top of the skull was covered by armor made of rounded bone plates. The teeth were arranged in two almost parallel rows of teeth, as with all ankylosaurs they were small and leaf-shaped and adapted to a vegetable diet.
The rest of the body of Tianzhenosaurus is not very well known. Like all ankylosaurs, it was a quadruped (moving on all fours) dinosaur whose body was covered by armor made of bone plates.
Discovery and naming
Fossil remains of Tianzhenosaurus were discovered in China in the Huiquanpu Formation in the Shanxi and Hebei provinces and named after the place where they were found, Tianzhen County ( belonging to the prefecture-level city of Datong ) in Shanxi. The only species and thus type species is T. youngi . The finds are dated to the late Upper Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian ).
Systematics
The systematic position of Tianzhenosaurus is controversial. Due to the great similarities with Saichania , the genus is sometimes regarded as its synonym. A phylogenetic study by Vickaryous et al. (2004), however, sees it closely related to Pinacosaurus . According to these investigations, the genus Pinacosaurus is even paraphyletic with respect to Tianzhenosaurus . However, the authors admit that this may also be related to the rather sparse fossil finds.
literature
- Matthew K. Vickaryous, Teresa Maryańska , David B. Weishampel : Ankylosauria. In: David B. Weishampel, Peter Dodson , Halszka Osmólska (eds.): The Dinosauria . 2nd edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2004, ISBN 0-520-24209-2 , pp. 363-392.
Individual evidence
- ^ Dougal Dixon : The World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures. Lorenz, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7548-1730-7 , p. 382.
