#pinacosaurus mephistocephalus

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Dinovember 2024 Day 16: Pinacosaurus

A scene inspired by an amazing find from the Campanian Bayan Mandahu Formation - A father Pinacosaurus mephistocephalus guides a crèche of his several meter-long sons and daughters on an arduous trek across the desert sands and straight out of reach from an incoming sandstorm, much the ones that have previously claimed the lives of several juveniles of this Asian ankylosaur.

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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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Pinacosaurus grangeri

('plank reptile, for Walter Wallis Granger')

Ankylosauridae Ankylosaurinae

Five metres long and roughly one tonne. (Could have been up to 2 tons.)

Pinacosaurus is by far the best-represented of the ankylosaurs. The genus may contain a second species, P. mephistocephalus.

Pinacosaurus must have lived in a fairly dry desert region because almost all of its fossils have been found in sand dune deposits. Scientists do not know what Pinacosaurus ate, but it and several other herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs were found in the same deposits, so some food was available.

Found in various formations, primarily the Djadokhta, in the desert regions of southern Mongolia and northern China.

Upper Cretaceous, ~75 - 72 Ma.

~

Artwork by Andrey Atuchin.

Daily Dino Fact #20