An ankylosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Shandong (China)

Abstract

AbstractIn 1923, H. C. T’an and O. Zdansky collected remains of an ankylosaurid dinosaur in the Late Cretaceous Wangshi Group of the Laiyang region, in eastern Shandong (China). Apart from a few caudal vertebrae, this material, which is kept at the Palaeontological Institution of the University of Uppsala (Sweden), was never described or figured. It includes a well-preserved sacrum with the attached right ilium and part of the presacral rod, caudal vertebrae, a left femur and a dermal scute. This material is referred to an ankylosaurid of the genus Pinacosaurus Gilmore, 1933, on the basis of the widely divergent ilium bearing a strong ventral ridge and of the slenderness of the femur. In the absence of cranial material, a specific attribution is difficult and the Uppsala material is referred to as Pinacosaurus cf. grangeri (P. grangeri being the only generally accepted species of Pinacosaurus). This is the first record of Pinacosaurus outside the Gobi Basin of Mongolia and northwestern China. In the Gobi Basin, Pinacosaurus has been reported only from the Djadokhta Formation or its equivalents, of supposed Campanian age, and it is suggested that at least the part of the Wangshi Group which yielded the Shandong Pinacosaurus may be of roughly the same age as the Djadokhta Formation.