HUANANSAURUS
a plant-eatingoviraptorine theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of China.
Pronunciation: HWAH-nan-SOR-us
Meaning: Southern China Lizard
Author/s: Lü
et al. (
2015)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Jiangxi Province, China
Discovery Chart Position: #899
Huanansaurus ganzhouensis
The Ganzhou area of Jiangxi Province has become something of a hotspot for oviraptorids, with an embarrassment of riches as far as these wrongly accused "egg snatchers" go. Such is the saturation that some species have been accused of being synonymous with others because it seemed unlikely that a single ecosystem could provide enough of the same foodstuff to sustain them all. Fortunately, all of the Jiangxi oviraptorid species identified thus far have sported a differently shaped beak, suggesting they occupied different dining niches and so avoided eating each other into starvation.
(Southern China lizard from Ganzhou)Etymology
Huanansaurus is derived from the Chinese Pinyin "Huá-nán" (southern China) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard). The
species epithet,
ganzhouensis, means "from Ganzhou" in Latin.
Discovery
The remains of
Huanansaurus were discovered in the Nanxiong Formation near the railway station at Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, southern China.
The
holotype (HGM41HIII-0443—housed at the Henan Geological Museum, Zhengzhou, China) is a partial skeleton with a nearly complete skull.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Maastrichtian
Age range: 71-66 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Omnivore
Huanansaurus
ganzhouensis
References
• Barsbold R, Maryanska T and Osmólska H (1990) "Oviraptorosauria". Page 249-258 in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmolska (eds.) "
The Dinosauria: First Edition".
• Xu X and Han FL (2010) "
A new Oviraptorid dinosaur (Theropoda: Oviraptorosauria) from the upper Cretaceous of China".
Vertebrata Palasiatica, 48(1): 11-18. [Banji long.]
• Wang S, Sun C, Sullivan C and Xu X (2013) "
A new oviraptorid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of southern China".
Zootaxa, 3640(2): 242-251. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3640.2.7. [Ganzhousaurus nankangensis.]
• Wei XF, Pu HY, Xu L, Liu D and Lü JC (2013) "A new oviraptorid dinosaur (Theropoda: Oviraptorosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Jiangxi Province, southern China".
Acta Geologica Sinica, 87: 899-904. [Jiangxisaurus ganzhouensis.]
• Lü JC, Yi LP, Zhong H and Wei XF (2013) "A new oviraptorosaur (Dinosauria: Oviraptorosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Southern China and its paleoecological implications".
PLoS ONE, 8(11): e80557. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0080557. [Nankangia jiangxiensis.]
• Junchang Lü, Hanyong Pu, Kobayashi Y, Li Xu, Chang H, Shang Y, Liu D, Lee Y-N, Kundrát M and Shen C (2015) "
A New Oviraptorid Dinosaur (Dinosauria: Oviraptorosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Southern China and Its Paleobiogeographical Implications".
Scientific Reports, 5: 11490. DOI: 10.1038/srep11490.
• Lü J, Chen R, Brusatte SL, Zhu Y and Shen C (2016)
"A Late Cretaceous diversification of Asian oviraptorid dinosaurs: evidence from a new species preserved in an unusual posture".
Scientific Reports, 6(1): 35780. DOI: 10.1038/srep35780.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
HUANANSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/HUANANSAURUS›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
