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Paleontologists have actually explained a brand-new types of the ankylosaurid dinosaur genus Zhongyuansaurus utilizing a specimen discovered in China’s Henan province.
Life restoration of Zhongyuansaurus junchangiImage credit: Connor Ashbridge/ CC BY 4.0.
Ankylosaurids(household Ankylosauridae)were herbivorous quadruped dinosaurs understood for their robust, scute-covered bodies, distinct body armor, leaf-shaped teeth, and club-like tails.
The earliest-known ankylosaurids date to around 122 million years back, and the youngest types went extinct 66 million years earlier throughout the end-Cretaceous termination.
The newly-identified types comes from a formerly monospecific ankylosaurid genus called Zhongyuansaurus
Called Zhongyuansaurus junchangiit resided in what is now China throughout the Albian age of the current Early Cretaceous.
The dinosaur’s fossilized remains were gathered from the upper part of the Haoling Formation at Zhongwa town in Henan province, China.
“The fossils are protected within a location of about 9 m2,” stated Dr. Ji-ming Zhang from the Henan Natural History Museum and coworkers.
“They are disarticulated and reveal no overlapping conservation, recommending they come from a single person.”
“The specimen consists of one right mandible, 14 totally free caudal vertebrae, 7 merged terminal caudal vertebrae forming a rod-like structure, 4 ribs, 10 haemal arches, one left humerus, one slim metatarsal, and 41 osteoderms of different shapes and sizes.”
Mandible of Zhongyuansaurus junchangiImage credit: Zhang et aldoi: 10.19800/ j.cnki.aps.2023037.
Zhongyuansaurus junchangi is identified by a distinct autapomorphy: a minimum of 5 caudal armor plates organized in a shingle-like pattern with a distinct swallowtail shape.
“Additionally, it displays reasonably slim mandibular bones compared to the more robust mandibles of sophisticated Ankylosaurinae,” the paleontologists stated.
“The anterior idea of the coronoid procedure extends just to the last 2 alveoli, varying from Shamosaurus“
“The distal caudal vertebrae are decorated with little osteoderms, and the humerus has a midshaft circumference-to-total-length ratio of 0.46, differentiating it from Zhongyuansaurus luoyangensis“
“The discovery of Zhongyuansaurus junchangi supplies brand-new insights into the development of ankylosaurs in the Lower Cretaceous strata of Ruyang and boosts the types variety of the Ruyang dinosaur animals,” the scientists concluded.
Their paper was released in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Sinica
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Ji-ming Zhang et al2025. New ankylosaurid product from the Lower Cretaceous of the Ruyang Basin, Henan Province. Acta Palaeontologica Sinica 64 (1 ): 60-73; doi: 10.19800/ j.cnki.aps.2023037
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