BIENOSAURUS
a dubious thyreophoran dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of China.
Pronunciation: BEE-en-oh-SOR-us
Meaning: Bien's lizard
Author/s: Dong (
2001)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Yunnan Province, China
Discovery Chart Position: #478
Bienosaurus lufengensis
(Bien's Lizard from Lufeng)Etymology
Bienosaurus is derived from "bien" (for Chinese palaeontologist Mei Nien Bien) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
lufengensis, means "from Lufeng" in Latin.
Discovery
The remains of
Bienosaurus were discovered in the Dark Red Beds of the Lower Lufeng Formation, Yunnan Province, China, by Mei Nien Bien between 1938 and 1939. The holotype (IVPP V15311) is a partial lower jaw and some skull fragments.
Originally, this specimen was catalogued as IVPP V 9612. But that had already been attached to the holotype of
Sinornithoides youngi, a troodontid theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Ejinhoro
Formation of Inner Mongolia.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Early Jurassic
Stage: Sinemurian
Age range: 199-193 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Simmons DJ (1965) "The non-therapsid reptiles of the Lufeng Basin, Yunnan, China".
Field Geology, 15: 1-93. [Names Tatisaurus.]
• Dong Z (2001) "Primitive Armored Dinosaur from the Lufeng Basin, China". Page 237-243 in Tanke and Carpenter (eds.) "
Mesozoic Vertebrate Life".
• Raven TJ, Barrett PM, Xu X and Maidment SCR (2019) "A reassessment of the purported ankylosaurian dinosaur
Bienosaurus lufengensis from the Lower Lufeng Formation of Yunnan, China".
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 64(2): 335-342. DOI: 10.4202/app.00577.2018.
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