Chilantaisaurus
genus of reptiles (fossil)
Chilantaisaurus ("Jilantai Salt Lake lizard") is an extinct genus of large theropod dinosaur that lived in present-day China during the Late Cretaceous period. It was described by Chinese paleontologist Hu Show-Yung in 1964. The genus contains a single valid species, C. tashuikouensis, though several other species have been assigned to the genus. C. tashuikouensis is known from a single, incomplete postcranial skeleton, the holotype specimen. This specimen was found by a joint Sino-Soviet expedition to Inner Mongolia in rock layers coming from the Ulansuhai Formation. These rock layers are thought to date to the Santonian or Campanian stages of the Cretaceous period, around 85.7 to 72.2 million years ago. However, the age of the Ulansuhai Formation is debated.
Chilantaisaurus was around 11 metres (36 ft) in length and weighed 2.5–4 metric tons (2.8–4.4 short tons). This makes it among the largest known theropod genera, comparable to Tyrannosaurus. The forelimbs of Chilantaisaurus are only known from a humerus and a manual ungual (hand claw); this humerus is one of the largest humeri known from a theropod dinosaur.
The public source identifies “Chilantaisaurus” as genus of reptiles (fossil). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chilantaisaurus, genus and reptiles.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q134633. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chilantaisaurus” 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.