Jianchangosaurus
genus of reptiles (fossil)
Jianchangosaurus ("lizard from Jianchang County") is a genus of therizinosaurian dinosaur that lived approximately 126 million years ago during the early part of the Cretaceous Period from the Yixian Formation in what is now China. The type specimen, a juvenile, was discovered in Jianchang County, in the western part of Liaoning Province. It was described in 2013 by a team of palaeontologists from the Henan Museum, who determined that it was among the most basal therizinosaurs.
Based on the type specimen, Jianchangosaurus was a small, lightly built, bipedal, ground-dwelling herbivore, which could grow up to an estimated 2 m (6.6 ft) long and was 1 m (3.3 ft) high at the hips. It probably had a body mass of around 26 kg (57 lb). In spite of its basal position, Jianchangosaurus already bore many of the hallmarks of therizinosaur anatomy, such as a beaked premaxilla, and the shape of the pubic boot. Jianchangosaurus' tibia was about half as long again as the femur, suggesting cursorial (running) habits.
Discovery and naming
The holotype of Jianchangosaurus (41HIII-0308A) is the nearly complete skeleton of a single juvenile, missing only the distal (far) portion of the tail, and some minor elements. It was discovered in Jianchang County, in the western part of Liaoning Province. The strata it was recovered from belong to the Yixian Formation, a Lagerstätte known for its vertebrate fossils.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jianchangosaurus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.