Tianzhenosaurus

Tianzhenosaurus youngi

• China

Tianzhenosaurus was a genus of bird Beck dinosaurs from the group of Ankylosauria. She lived at the end of the Upper Cretaceous in East Asia.

Features

Tianzhenosaurus was a rather smaller representative of the Ankylar, its length is estimated to be 4 meters. It is similar in physique Saichania, but reached only 60% of its size. The skull (28 cm long ) was wide and ended in a toothless horny beak. At the back of the head and on the cheek he wore two bony spines, the top of the skull was covered with an armor of roundish bone plates. The teeth were arranged in two nearly parallel rows of teeth, as with all ankylosauruses they were small and leaf-shaped and adapted to a plant-based diet.

The rest of the body of Tianzhenosaurus is not very well known. Like all Ankylar he was a quadrupeder ( Locomotive on all fours ) dinosaur whose body was covered with an armor of bony plates.

Discovery and designation

Fossil remains of Tianzhenosaurus was discovered in China in the Huiquanpu lineup in the provinces of Shanxi and Hebei and after the locality, the circle Tianzhen ( the prefecture-level city belonging Datong ) in Shanxi named. Only species and therefore type species is T. youngi. The finds are dated to the late Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian ).

System

The systematic position of Tianzhenosaurus is controversial. Due to the great similarities to the genus Saichania is sometimes regarded as the synonym. A phylogenetic study of Vickaryous et al. (2004) sees it, however, closely related to Pinacosaurus. According to these studies, the genus Pinacosaurus is even paraphyletic with respect to Tianzhenosaurus. However, the authors acknowledge that this may also be in communication with the rather sparse fossil record.