CHINGKANKOUSAURUS

Although never as popular as the poster-boy predators, Chingkankousaurus fragilis has done its fair share of moving and shaking on the theropod branch of the dinosaurian family tree, despite being known from almost nothing. Named by Chinese palaeontologist Yang Zhongjian (better known in the West as C.C. Young) in 1958, it was based on a single fragmentary bone from the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Group of Shandong Province in eastern China that was identified as part of a scapula (shoulder blade).

At first, Young compared its sole fossil to the corresponding bone of Allosaurus, noting that it was similar, albeit somewhat smaller, while later researchers opined it might belong to an allosaurid (Dong, 1992), a megalosaurid (Steel, 1970), a tyrannosaurid (Molnar et al., 1990), a coelurosaur of uncertain affinities (Chure, 2000), or be a specimen of the Asian powerhouse Tarbosaurus (Holtz, 2004). Some workers even questioned whether the supposed scapula was really a scapula at all, proposing that it could instead be part of a rib.

A detailed reassessment by Brusatte, Hone, and Xu in 2013 concluded that the specimen is probably tyrannosauroid, more derived than the basal Guanlong and Dilong but less so than bona fide tyrannosaurids, and far too fragmentary to anchor a valid standalone critter. As a result, Chingkankousaurus is generally regarded as a nomen dubium, leaving its exact identity unresolved and continuing to generate more questions than answers.