Pronunciation: foo-LEN-jee-uh
Meaning: Anagram of Lufeng
Author/s: Carroll and Galton (1977)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Yunnan, China
Discovery Chart Position: #254
Fulengia youngi
Fulengia was originally catalogued as a juvenile specimen of the sauropodomorph ("prosauropod") Yunnanosaurus huangi by Simmons in 1965.* But twelve years later, Carroll and Galton reclassified it as a lizard and craftily re-organised the letters of Lufeng, the rock formation in which it was discovered, into an anagram that formed the basis of its new name.*
Until this point, the oldest known "true" lizards were from the Late Jurassic of America, Europe and China, but Fulengia would push their earliest record way back into the Late Triassic, provided it was actually a true lizard and that the Lufeng Formation was, in fact, Triassic-aged.* As it later transpired, the Lufeng had been horrendously misdated, and based on tooth shape and jaw design the now-confirmed Late Jurassic-aged Fulengia isn't a true lizard: it's a dinosaur. By the by, none of the dinosaurs are actually lizards, despite many of them having names that suggest otherwise ("sauros" means "lizard" in Greek), but they are reptiles, which makes modern birds reptiles too.
The holotype remains of Fulengia are contained in a mineralised nodule, and two other nodules (CUP 2038a and CUP 2038b) from the same site were also found during reinspection of the Catholic University of Peking collections in 1989. All bones contained therein are a jumbled mass, and there seems to be more than one individual present. Simmons reckoned the nodules are "coprolitic in origin"*, which means they are piles of poop, though there's no way to tell for sure.
In 1989, Evans and Milner came to the conclusion that Fulengia is a dinosaur of the "prosauropod" persuasion and that it's most likely synonymous with the same area's Lufengosaurus,* and if that is the case, then the anagrammed part of its name would be anagrammed back.
Simmons wasn't far away in his initial assessment of Fulengia. At least he got its sauropodomorph affinities right, and its remains are piles of poop, just not in the way he suggested. Most palaeontologists afford Fulengia no more than the occasional suspicious glance these days and consider it highly dubious.
Until this point, the oldest known "true" lizards were from the Late Jurassic of America, Europe and China, but Fulengia would push their earliest record way back into the Late Triassic, provided it was actually a true lizard and that the Lufeng Formation was, in fact, Triassic-aged.* As it later transpired, the Lufeng had been horrendously misdated, and based on tooth shape and jaw design the now-confirmed Late Jurassic-aged Fulengia isn't a true lizard: it's a dinosaur. By the by, none of the dinosaurs are actually lizards, despite many of them having names that suggest otherwise ("sauros" means "lizard" in Greek), but they are reptiles, which makes modern birds reptiles too.
The holotype remains of Fulengia are contained in a mineralised nodule, and two other nodules (CUP 2038a and CUP 2038b) from the same site were also found during reinspection of the Catholic University of Peking collections in 1989. All bones contained therein are a jumbled mass, and there seems to be more than one individual present. Simmons reckoned the nodules are "coprolitic in origin"*, which means they are piles of poop, though there's no way to tell for sure.
In 1989, Evans and Milner came to the conclusion that Fulengia is a dinosaur of the "prosauropod" persuasion and that it's most likely synonymous with the same area's Lufengosaurus,* and if that is the case, then the anagrammed part of its name would be anagrammed back.
Simmons wasn't far away in his initial assessment of Fulengia. At least he got its sauropodomorph affinities right, and its remains are piles of poop, just not in the way he suggested. Most palaeontologists afford Fulengia no more than the occasional suspicious glance these days and consider it highly dubious.
(an anagram of Lufeng, named for C.C. Young)Etymology
Fulengia is an anagram of Lufeng, the Formation in Yunnan Province in which its remains were found.
The species epithet, youngi, honors C.C. Young (aka Yang Zhongjian).
Discovery
The remains of Fulengia were discovered in the Lower Lufeng Formation at TaTi in Yunnan Province, China.The holotype (CUP 2037) is a mineralised lump containing a small skull, just under 4cm long, a single vertebrae, and a jumble of impossible to identify bones. They were originally part of the collections of the Catholic University of Peking (CUP), but now reside at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA.
