Called Yinshanosaurus angustusthe newly-identified types strolled Earth throughout the most recent Permian duration, in between 259 and 254 million years back.

The ancient monster belonged to Pareiasauria, a specific group of herbivorous tetrapods that existed throughout the supercontinent Pangea throughout the Middle-Late Permian.

“Pareiasauria are a strange herbivorous clade of tetrapods that existed in the Guadalupian and Lopingian and were victims of both the Late Capitanian and the end-Permian mass termination occasions,” stated Dr. Jian Yi and Jun Liu from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chongqing Institute of Paleontology.

“Pareiasauria has an around the world circulation, with fossils found in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America.”

“Pareiasaurs prevailed main customers in numerous terrestrial tetrapod animals, consisting of the Late Permian animals of northern China.”

“Since the 1960s, 8 Chinese pareiasaur types have actually been explained.”

2 specimens– an almost total skull and an articulated partial postcranial skeleton with an almost total skull– were uncovered in China in 2018.

“The very first specimen was excavated type the dark purple siltstone in the lower part of the Sunjiagou Formation, near Zhangjiagetuo town, Baode county, Xinzhou city, Shanxi,” the paleontologists stated.

“The 2nd specimen was excavated from purple silty mudstone in the upper part of Member I of the Naobaogou Formation, near Qiandian town, Shiguai district of Baotou City, Nei Mongol.”

According to the authors, Yinshanosaurus angustus had the narrowest skull of all pareiasaurs, with skull length more than two times the skull width at the lateral edges of the cheeks.

“The skeleton of Yinshanosaurus angustus offers the total cranial and articulated postcranial information of Chinese pareiasaurs for the very first time,” they stated.

Their paper was released this month in the journal Documents in Palaeontology

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Jian Yi & & Jun Liu. 2025. The tetrapod animals of the upper Permian Naobaogou Formation of China: a brand-new mid-sized pareiasaur Yinshanosaurus angustus and its ramifications for the phylogenetic relationships of pareiasaurs. Documents in Palaeontology 11 (3 ): e70020; doi: 10.1002/ spp2.70020