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[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Pinacosaurus grangeri, P. mephistocephalus

By José Carlos Cortés on @ryuukibart

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Name: Pinacosaurus grangeri, P. mephistocephalus

Name Meaning: Plank Reptile

First Described: 1933

Described By: Gilmore

Classification: Dinosauria, Ornithischia, Genasauria, Thyreophora, Eurypoda, Ankylosauria, Ankylosauridae, Ankylosaurinae

Pinacosaurus is an Ankylosaurine known from more specimens than any other Ankylosaur from Asia, with many skeletons and bonebeds known from locations in Mongolia and China, including the Djadokhta Formation’s Flaming Cliffs, as well as at the Alag Teeg site, Bayan Mandahu, the Minhe Formation in Gansu Province. It lived between 80 and 75 million years ago, in the Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous. It was about five meters long and lightly built, with a long skull, and lack of ornamentation on the rear of the skull, and cheek horns that weren’t curved upward. It also had a notch in its armour just above its nostrils, and horns behind the skull roof. It also had a very flat torso, with robust hindlimbs, with osteoderms covering its neck and body. The sides of its rump and tail also had long triangular spikes, and it had a tail club. 

By Jack Wood on @thewoodparable

Though it has two species, it is up in the air whether or not they’re monophyletic, with Arbour (2015) finding them to be so. Pinacosaurus itself lived in a semi-desert environment, interspersed with oases, with no major large predators present. It was lightly built, however, to probably allow it to fight small theropods (such as Velociraptor) in its environment better, with the large tail club fast enough to hit the predators attacking it. Juveniles are known, with a group of them all found buried together in the same direction, indicating they were members of a herd and all the same age - though the reason for this congregation is unknown. It had a very muscular tongue to allow to to grab plant matter, with a varied diet including tough leaves and pulpy fruits, and maybe even insects. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinacosaurus

Arbour, V. M, & P. J. Currie. 2015. Systematics, phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2015.1059985

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