Qianjiangsaurus changshengi Qianjiangsaurus
"[[Qianjiang, Chongqing"
- Length
- 8 m (26.2 ft)
- Period
- Late Cretaceous (84 Mya)
- Place
- China · Mongolia
- Food
- Herbivore
- Clade
- Dinosauria
Qianjiangsaurus (“Qianjiang lizard”) is an extinct genus of hadrosauroid ornithopod dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous Zhengyang Formation of China. The genus contains a single species, Qianjiangsaurus changshengi, named in 2025 based on a partial skeleton and lower jaw. In 2026, a partial isolated skull was described, indicating the species has a distinctive hollow crest on its snout. This is similar to the crests of some distantly related lambeosaurine hadrosaurs, but it evolved independently, making it the first ornithopod to bear such a structure outside of Lambeosaurinae. This crest may have been used to amplify its vocalizations, as in other crest-bearing hadrosaurs. Qianjiangsaurus is one of the few hadrosauroids named from south China, and it shows faunal connections between similarly aged formations in Mongolia.
What we know
- Named by Dai et al., 2025.
- Body length estimated at about 8 m.
- Fossils found in China and Mongolia.