Zhongyuansaurus

Zhongyuansaurus is an extinct genus of ankylosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Ruyang, Henan, China. It is known from remains including skull, arm, pelvic, and tail bones. It is distinguished by characteristics such as a flat roof to the skull, a straight ischium, and the location of muscle attachments on the upper arm. The type species, Z. luoyangensis, was described by Xu and colleagues in 2007. Zhongyuansaurus was described by Xu et al. as the first Chinese nodosaurid based primarily upon the absence of a tail club and its elongate skull,[1] but was reevaluated in 2008 by Kenneth Carpenter and colleagues as a shamosaurine ankylosaurid, a type of ankylosaurid lacking a tail club.[2] A new cladistic analysis performed by Thompson et al., 2011 suggests that Zhongyuansaurus is the basalmost known ankylosaurine and thus it is the first species of this clade known to lack a tail club.[3] In 2014, Victoria Megan Arbour concluded that Zhongyuansaurus was a probable junior synonym of Gobisaurus.[4]

Zhongyuansaurus
Temporal range: Lower Cretaceous
Reconstructed skeleton, Henan Geological Museum
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Order: †Ornithischia
Family: †Ankylosauridae
Subfamily: †Ankylosaurinae
Genus: †Zhongyuansaurus
Xu et al., 2007
Species:
†Z. luoyangensis
Binomial name
†Zhongyuansaurus luoyangensis
Xu et al., 2007
Skull

See also

References
  1. Li, Xu; Lu Junchang; Zhang Xingliao; Jia Songhai; Hu Weiyong; Zhang Jiming; Wu Yanhua; Ji Qiang (2007). "New nodosaurid ankylosaur from the Cretaceous of Ruyang, Henan Province". Acta Geologica Sinica. 81 (4): 433–438.
  2. Carpenter, Kenneth; Bartlett, Jeff; Bird, John; Barrick, Reese (2008). "Ankylosaurs from the Price River Quarries, Cedar Mountain Formation (Lower Cretaceous), east-central Utah". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 28 (4): 1089–1101. doi:10.1671/0272-4634-28.4.1089.
  3. Richard S. Thompson; Jolyon C. Parish; Susannah C. R. Maidment; Paul M. Barrett (2012). "Phylogeny of the ankylosaurian dinosaurs (Ornithischia: Thyreophora)". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 10 (2): 301–312. doi:10.1080/14772019.2011.569091.
  4. Arbour, Victoria Megan, 2014. Systematics, evolution, and biogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs. Ph.D thesis, University of Alberta


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