Pronunciation: gong-SHE-en-o-SOR-us
Meaning: Gong county lizard
Author/s: He et al. (1998)
Synonyms: Yibinosaurus zhoui? (Ouyang, 2003)
First Discovery: Sichuan, China
Discovery Chart Position: #427
Gongxianosaurus shibeiensis
(Gongxian Lizard from Shibei)Etymology
Gongxianosaurus is derived from "Gong Xian" (the county in which it was discovered) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The species epithet, shibeiensis, means "from Shibei" in Latin, referring to Shibei Village.
Discovery
The remains of Gongxianosaurus were discovered in purple mudstones of the Dongyuemiao Member of the Ziliujing Formation near Hongshacun Hamlet, Shibei village, Gong Xian (Gong County), Sichuan Provence, China, by Fengyun Zhou and others from the 202nd Corps of the Sichuan
Geological Survey in May 1997. This area was initially reported as being Toarcian (185-174 mya) in age. However, studies of carbon-isotopes suggest it lay beneath the Sinemurian-Pliensbachian (199-185 mya) boundary, and parts of it were in the lower end of that, which pushed the age back some 10 million years.
At least three individuals were present in the quarry, the first of which was a juvenile consisting of a shoulder girdle, an arm and a leg. The two adult individuals of similar size were selected as the holotype and paratype, but they weren't assigned field codes, given the difficulty distinguishing which elements belonged to which individual, and that was pencilled in to be addressed in a later paper. The latter two specimens consist of two right upper jaw bones, two lower jaws, many isolated teeth, incomplete and disarticulated neck, back, hip, and tail vertebrae, a shoulder girdle, a forelimb, a pelvic girdle, a hind limb, a hind foot, and ribs.
In 2000, Luo and Wang suggested several bones may not pertain to Gongxianosaurus and should be assigned to another new species. Ouyang Hui duly obliged in 2003 and moved those fossils to a new critter, "Yibinosaurus zhoui", but that was in his unpublished PhD thesis, so the name remains informal. Unfortunately, the exhibition hall that was built over the specimens, to protect them as palaeontologists worked on the fossils where they lay and readied a full description which has yet to materialise, collapsed and likely destroyed them, so what we now know of Gongxianosaurus may be all we'll ever know.
