Dinosaurs A to Z
Ankylosauridae

Chuanqilong chaoyangensis

"legendary dragon"

Generic ankylosaur body-plan outline
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Chuanqilong 5 m (16.4 ft) long
as long as 3 people standing fingertip to fingertip
generic ankylosaur body plan, scaled to length — not a silhouette of Chuanqilong
Length
5 m (16.4 ft)
Period
Early Cretaceous (124–121 Mya)
Place
China
Food
Herbivore
Clade
Ankylosauridae Dinosauria Ornithischia Thyreophora Ankylosauria Club-tailed armored herbivores.

Chuanqilong (meaning “legendary dragon”) is a monospecific genus of basal ankylosaurid dinosaur from the Liaoning Province, China that lived during the Early Cretaceous ( Barremian to Aptian stage, 124.0 to 121 Ma) in what is now the Jiufotang Formation. The type and only species, Chuanqilong chaoyangensis, is known from a nearly complete skeleton with a skull of a juvenile individual. It was described in 2014 by Fenglu Han, Wenjie Zheng, Dongyu Hu, Xing Xu, and Paul M. Barrett. Chuanqilong shows many similarities with Liaoningosaurus and may represent a later ontogenetic stage of the taxon.

Chuanqilong was a medium-sized ankylosaur, with an estimated length of 4.5 metres (14.8 feet), although it has been suggested that it would have been larger due to the immature age of the type specimen.

What we know

  • Named by Han et al., 2014.
  • Fossils found in China.

What we guess

The reconstruction notes for Chuanqilong — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.