Jianchangosaurus Jianchangosaurus

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 long and was 1 m high at the hips. It probably had a body mass of around 26 kg. 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.