''Mongolostegus'' (meaning "Mongolian roof") is a genus of

stegosaur Stegosauria is a group of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, predominantly in what is now North America, Europe, ...

from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Pro ...

(Aptian-Albian) Dzunbain Formation of

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

. The type and only species is ''M. exspectabilis'', known from a single specimen previously under the ''

nomen nudum In taxonomy, a ''nomen nudum'' ('naked name'; plural ''nomina nuda'') is a designation which looks exactly like a scientific name of an organism, and may have originally been intended to be one, but it has not been published with an adequate descr ...

'' ''Wuerhosaurus mongoliensis''.T. A. Tumanova & V. R. Alifanov (2018) First Record of Stegosaur (Ornithischia, Dinosauria) from the Aptian-Albian of Mongolia. Paleontological Journal 52(14) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0031030118140186 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0031030118140186

Discovery and description

''Mongolostegus'' was first reported by Alifanov ''et al.'' (2005) and Alifanov (2012) as an indeterminate stegosaur based on posterior dorsal and anterior caudal vertebrae as well as pelvic material. Ulansky (2014) informally dubbed the material ''Wuerhosaurus mongoliensis'',Ulansky, Roman. E., (2014). Evolution of the stegosaurs (Dinosauria; Ornithischia). Dinologia, 35 pp. n Russianbr>PDF
but Galton and Carpenter (2016) found ''W. mongoliensis'' to be invalid.Galton, Peter M.; Carpenter, Kenneth M (2016). "The plated dinosaur Stegosaurus longispinus Gilmore, 1914 (Dinosauria: Ornithischia; Upper Jurassic, western USA), type species of Alcovasaurus n. gen". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen. 279 (2): 185–208. doi:10.1127/njgpa/2016/0551. It was formally named as ''Mongolostegus'' by Tumanova and Alifanov in 2018.

References

Stegosaurs Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Cretaceous Mongolia Aptian life Fossils of Mongolia Fossil taxa described in 2018 Ornithischian genera {{Stegosaur-stub

Discovery and description

See also

References