''Lanzhousaurus'' (meaning "

Lanzhou Lanzhou (, ; ) is the capital and largest city of Gansu Province in Northwest China. Located on the banks of the Yellow River, it is a key regional transportation hub, connecting areas further west by rail to the eastern half of the country. H ...

lizard") is a genus of

ornithopod Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (), that started out as small, bipedal running grazers and grew in size and numbers until they became one of the most successful groups of herbivores in the Cretaceous world ...

dinosaur. ''Lanzhousaurus'' lived in the

Gansu Gansu (, ; alternately romanized as Kansu) is a province in Northwest China. Its capital and largest city is Lanzhou, in the southeast part of the province. The seventh-largest administrative district by area at , Gansu lies between the Tibet ...

region of what is now

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

during the Early Cretaceous ( Barremian). A partial

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

has been recovered from the

Hekou Group The Hekou Group is a geological group in Gansu Province, China. It is Early Cretaceous in age. Dinosaur body fossils have also been recovered from the Hekou Group, including the iguanodont '' Lanzhousaurus'' and the titanosaurs ''Daxiatitan'', ...

. It was described by You, Ji and Li in

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

and the

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * Ty ...

and only species is ''Lanzhousaurus magnidens''.You, H.-L. (2005) ''Lanzhousaurus magnidens'' from the Lower Cretraceous of Gansu province, China: The largest-toothed herbivorous dinosaur in the world. ''JVP'' 26(3) Abstracts pp. 142 It's been estimated to be about 10 meters (33 feet) in length and 6 tonnes (6.6 short tons) in weight.

Dentition

The genus has been described as having "astonishingly huge teeth", among the largest for any herbivorous creature ever, which indicate it was a

styracosterna Ankylopollexia is an extinct clade of ornithischian dinosaurs that lived from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous. It is a derived clade of iguanodontian ornithopods and contains the subgroup Styracosterna. The name stems from the Greek word ...

n iguanodont. The mandible, longer than one meter, suggests a very large size for the animal. Tooth enamel of this dinosaur was growing very rapidly.

Celina A. Suarez Celina A. Suarez is an American geologist. She is known for her research on using trace element and stable isotope geochemistry of fossil vertebrates and invertebrates to understand paleoecology, paleoclimatology, and taphonomy of ancient terrest ...

, Hai-Lu You, Marina B. Suarez, Da-Qing Li & J. B. Trieschmann (2017). Stable Isotopes Reveal Rapid Enamel Elongation (Amelogenesis) Rates for the Early Cretaceous Iguanodontian Dinosaur ''Lanzhousaurus magnidens''. ''Scientific Reports'' 7, Article number: 15319 (2017). do
10.1038/s41598-017-15653-6
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References

Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2005 Iguanodonts Paleontology in Gansu Ornithischian genera {{ornithopod-stub