MONGOLOSTEGUS
a stegosaurian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia.
Pronunciation: mon-GO-lo-STEG-us
Meaning: Mongoliam roof
Author/s: Tumanova and Alifanov (
2018)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Dornogovi, Mongolia
Acta Ordinal: #984
Mongolostegus exspectabilis
Mongolostegus is the first—and so far only—stegosaur named from Mongolia, and one of the last surviving members of its clan. Its presence in the same formation as
Shamosaurus scutatus is a rare case of both major thyreophoran branches—stegosaurs and ankylosaurs—occupying a single landscape.
(Mongolian roof, expected for a long time)Etymology
Mongolostegus is derived from "Mongolia" (the country in which it was discovered) and the Greek "stege" (roof).
The
species epithet,
exspectabilis, means "expected for a long time" in Latin.
Wuerhosaurus mongoliensis (Ulansky, 2014)
Discovery
The remains of
Mongolostegus were discovered at the Khamryn-Us (=Gashuny-Khuduk) locality in the Dzunbain Formation, in the northwestern part of the Barun-Khadyn-Khyar Stony Plateau, approximately 160 km southeast of the town of Sain Shand, Dornogov Aimag, Mongolia, by a field team headed by S.M. Kurzanov of the Joint Soviet-Mongolian Paleontological Expedition (SSMPE) in 1981.
The
holotype (PIN, no. 3779-15) is a left pubis and
part of a right pubis, a series of six vertebrae from the base of the tail, an almost complete hip rib, and various pelvic fragments.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Early Cretaceous
Stage: Albian
Age range: 113-100 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
Mongolostegus
exspectabilis
References
• Alifanov BP, Tumanova TA and Kurzanov CM (2005) "First discovery of a stegosaur in Mongolia".
Priroda, 12: 61-63.
• Alifanov BP (2012) "Fossil Vertebrates of Russia and Adjacent Countries. Fossil Reptiles and Birds. Part 2".
Moscow (GEOS).
• Ulansky RE (2014) "
Evolution of the stegosaurs (Dinosauria; Ornithischia)".
Dinologia, 35 pp.
• 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.
• Tumanova TA and Alifanov VR (2018) "First Record of Stegosaur (Ornithischia, Dinosauria) from the Aptian-Albian of Mongolia".
Paleontological Journal 52(14) DOI: 10.1134/S0031030118140186.
• Sánchez-Fenollosa S and Cobos A (2025) "New insights into the phylogeny and skull evolution of stegosaurian dinosaurs: An extraordinary cranium from the European Late Jurassic (Dinosauria: Stegosauria)".
Vertebrate Zoology, 75: 147-171. DOI: 10.3897/vz.75.e146618.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
MONGOLOSTEGUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/MONGOLOSTEGUS›. Web access: 06th Jun 2026.
