TIANZHENOSAURUS
a plant-eating ankylosaurine dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of China.
Pronunciation: TYEN-juhn-o-SOR-us
Meaning: Tianzhen lizard
Author/s: Pang and Cheng (
1998)
Synonyms: Shanxia tianzhenensis?
First Discovery: Shanxi Province, China
Discovery Chart Position: #438
Tianzhenosaurus youngi
(Young's Tianzhen lizard)Etymology
Tianzhenosaurus is derived from "Tianzhen" (referring to Tianzhen County) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard). The
species epithet,
youngi, honours Chinese palaeontologist C.C Young (aka Yang Zhongjian).
Discovery
The remains of
Tianzhenosaurus were discovered at "Kangdailiang Quarry" in the Huiquanpu (aka Huiquanbao) Formation, near Zhaojiagou Village, Wu Valley, Tianzhen County, Shanxi (West Mountain) Province, northern China, by Pang Qiqing and Cheng Zhengwu in 1983. The
holotype (HBV-10001) is a virtually complete skull, 28 cm long and 29 cm wide. Specimens HBV-10002 (a partial right lower jaw) and HBV-10003 (a fairly complete skulless skeleton) were assigned to
Tianzhenosaurus as paratypes.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Cenomanian-Campanian
Age range: 99-71 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 4 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 400 Kg
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Pang Q and Cheng Z (1998) "A new ankylosaur of the late Cretaceous from Tianzhen, Shanxi".
Progress in Natural Science, 8(3): 326-334.
• Vickaryous MK, Maryanska, and Weishampel DB (2004) "Chapter 17: Ankylosauria". In Weishampel, Dodson and Osmolska (eds.) "
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Arbour VM and Currie PJ (2015) "Systematics, phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs".
Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 14(5): 1-60. DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2015.1059985.
• Ma D (2019) "
Preliminary study on the sexual dimorphism of Tianzhenosaurus youngi".
Journal of Geology, 43(4): 589-594.
• Pand Q, Li Z and Guo Z (2024) "A New Species of Ankylosaurian Dinosaur—
Tianzhenosaurus chengi sp. nov., from the Late Cretaceous of Tianzhen County, Shanxi Province, China".
Journal of Hebei GEO University, 06: 41-73. DOI: 10.13937/j.cnki.hbdzdxxb.2024.06.006.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
TIANZHENOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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