Chialingosaurus

Live reconstruction of Chialingosaurus Kuani

• China: Sichuan Province (Asia)

• Chialingosaurus Kuani

Chialingosaurus was a dinosaur genus from the group of Stegosauria.

Features

Chialingosaurus was a rather small Stegosaurus, which reached a length of about four meters. He pointed like all Stegosaurus on a double row of bony structures ( osteoderms ) along the back and tail. They were small bone plates, the exact shape and extent is not known, however.

The skull was tall and narrow and characterized by the low compared with other stegosaurs number of teeth. These were adapted as with all stegosaurs small and triangular and plant food. As with most stegosaurs the hind legs were much longer than the front legs, characteristic of this genus, however, are the relatively slender limbs.

Discovery and designation

Fossils of Chialingosaurus were discovered in the 1950s in the Shaximiao formation in the Chinese province of Sichuan and the famous Chinese paleontologist C. C. Young ( actually Yang Zhongjian ) scientifically described. The only way, and thus the type species is C. Kuani. The name of this dinosaur is derived from the river Chialing ( Jialing ), a tributary of the Yangtze. The finds are dated to the Upper Jurassic ( Oxfordian ) and thus to an age of about 163-157 million years.

It was the first representative of Stegosauria, which was found in China - now are from this country a number of genres, also from the same formation known.