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CHUNGKINGOSAURUS

a plant-eating stegosaurid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of China.
Pronunciation: CHUNG-CHIN-go-SOR-us
Meaning: Chongqing Lizard
Author/s: Dong, Zhou and Zhang (1983)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Chongqing, China
Discovery Chart Position: #298

Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis

1977, it seems, was the Chinese year of the Stegosaur, with many a "roof lizard" being un-earthed. However, Chungkingosaurus was the smallest of those and could well be the smallest ever from anywhere, especially since India's "dwarf stegosaur" Dravidosaurus turned out to be a sea-dwelling plesiosaur.

Despite its modest size, Chungkingosaurus was well-stacked. Its skull was relatively deep for a stegosaurid, and its lower jaw was robust with small, tightly packed, weakly-enamelled teeth. Its most distinguishing feature is its armour plates which were tall, thick and pointed but tallest over its hips, and it may have had four pairs of spikes on its thagomizer (assuming specimen sp. 3 belongs here) which would have made all the difference in the Jurassic of Chongqing.

Chungkingosaurus shared its time and place with fellow stegosaurids Tuojiangosaurus and Chialingosaurus and the sauropods Mamenchisaurus and Omeisaurus, and being the smallest of the lot meant it was probably singled out by the area's apex predator, Yangchuanosaurus, as the easiest meal.

In 2010, because of its modest size, Greg Paul suggested that Chungkingosaurus was merely the juvenile version of Tuojiangosaurus.
(Chungking lizard from Jiangbei)Etymology
Chungkingosaurus is derived from "Chungking" (the Wade-Giles Romanized version of Chongqing, for postal purposes) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard). The species epithet, jiangbeiensis, means "from Jiangbei" in Latin.
ZooBank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:5F0C5467-75D2-431E-B2FE-0E234DDF0FA4.
Discovery
The first fossils of Chungkingosaurus were discovered in the Upper Shaximiao (Shangshaximiao) Formation at Maoershi in the Jiangbei District of Chongqing (Chungking) municipality, Sichuan Province, China, in 1977. The holotype (CV 00206) consists of ten vertebrae from its back, twenty three from its tail and five from its hip, a partial skull, both thighs and shins, a partial but straight, slender and long humerus, three toes and five armour plates. The whereabouts of much of that material, including the skull, is currently a mystery.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Jurassic
Stage: Oxfordian
Age range: 161-156 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 4 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 450 Kg
Diet: Herbivore
Other Species
When they described the holotype in 1983, Dong et al. also assigned three other specimens to Chungkingosaurus, two of which are from the same area, but none were assigned to the name-bearing Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis nor given their own specific names, mainly because their remains were too fragmentary.
Chungkingosaurus sp. 1 (CV 00207) from the Upper Shaximiao Formation at Ouling Public Park in Chungking, was almost five meters long and had one less fused hip vertebrae than Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis.
Chungkingosaurus sp. 2 (CV 00205) from the Upper Shaximiao Formation at Huayibo, central Chungking, was over five meters long and had a slightly higher thigh-to-upper arm ratio than the former two specimens.
Chungkingosaurus sp. 3. (CV 00208) from the Upper Shaximiao Formation at Longshi, Hechuan County, Sichuan, is one of the rare instances of a stegosaur being discovered with tail spikes still attached to its tail. There were four pairs originally, though one pair was lost due to weathering according to Yihong Zhang who excavated the remains. The base of each pair span three tail vertebrae.
In 2014, Roman Ulansky named CV 00205 Chungkingosaurus giganticus and CV 00207 Chungkingosaurus magnus, but by this point, his serial self-publishing was getting on palaeontologists' nerves. Maidment and Wei had already assigned both specimens to Chungkingosaurus jiangbeiensis in 2006 and the universal opinion is that's where they belong. As with the holotype, the whereabouts of much of this material, plus the entirety of CV 00208 (sp. 3), is currently a mystery.
References
• Dong Z, Zhou S and Zhang Y (1983) "Dinosaurs from the Jurassic of Sichuan". Palaeontologia Sinica, New Series C. 162(23): 1-136 [English translation by Will Downs.]
• Galton PM and Upchurch P (2004) Chapter 16: "Stegosauria". In Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska (eds.) "The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Maidment SCR and Wei G (2006) "A review of the Late Jurassic stegosaurs (Dinosauria, Stegosauria) from the People's Republic of China". Geological Magazine, 143(5): 621-634. DOI: 10.1017/S0016756806002500
• Maidment SCR, Norman DB, Barrett PM and Upchurch P (2008) "Systematics and phylogeny of Stegosauria (Dinosauria: Ornithischia)". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 6(4): 367-407. DOI: 10.1017/S1477201908002459
• Paul (2010) GS "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs". Page 221.
• Ulansky RE (2014) "Evolution of the stegosaurs (Dinosauria; Ornithischia)". Dinologia, 35 pp. [in Russian].
• Galton PM and Carpenter K (2016) "The plated dinosaur Stegosaurus longispinus Gilmore, 1914 (Dinosauria: Ornithischia; Upper Jurassic, western USA), type species of Alcovasaurus n. gen.". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen 279(2): 185-208. DOI: 10.1127/njgpa/2016/0551
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L. "CHUNGKINGOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
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