Tianzhenosaurus
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| Tienzhenosaurus Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
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Tianzhenosaurus (Tianzhen + Greek sauros="lizard") is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur discovered in Tianzhen County, at Kangdailiang near Zhaojiagou Village, in Shanxi Province, China, in the Late Cretaceous Huiquanpu Formation. Thus far, a virtually complete skull and postcranial skeleton have been assigned to the genus, which is monotypic (T. youngi Pang & Cheng, 1998). This was a medium-sized ankylosaurian, the skull measuring 28 centimeters (11 in) in length, with a total body length of approximately 4 meters (13 ft). Some authors have suggested that Tianzhenosaurus is actually a junior synonym of Saichania chulsanensis, but this matter remains unresolved, and Vickaryous et al. (2004) placed it within the Ankylosauridae, nested as the sister group to Pinacosaurus.
[edit] References
- Carpenter, K. (ed.) The Armored Dinosaurs. pp. 454-483. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
- 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, Maryanska, and Weishampel 2004. Chapter Seventeen: Ankylosauria. in The Dinosauria (2nd edition), Weishampel, D. B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H., editors. University of California Press.
