Zhongyuansaurus

Zhongyuansaurus is an extinct genus of ankylosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Ruyang, Henan, China. It is known from remains including skull, arm, pelvic, and tail bones. It is distinguished by characteristics such as a flat roof to the skull, a straight ischium, and the location of muscle attachments on the upper arm. The type species, Z. luoyangensis, was described by Xu and colleagues in 2007. Zhongyuansaurus was described by Xu et al. as the first Chinese nodosaurid based primarily upon the absence of a tail club and its elongate skull, but was reevaluated in 2008 by Kenneth Carpenter and colleagues as a shamosaurine ankylosaurid, a type of ankylosaurid lacking a tail club. A new cladistic analysis performed by Thompson et al., 2011 suggests that Zhongyuansaurus is the basalmost known ankylosaurine and thus it is the first species of this clade known to lack a tail club. In 2014, Victoria Megan Arbour concluded that Zhongyuansaurus was a probable junior synonym of Gobisaurus.