''Penelopognathus'' (meaning "wild duck jaw") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

which lived during the Early

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

. It was an

iguanodont Iguanodontia (the iguanodonts) is a clade of herbivorous dinosaurs that lived from the Middle Jurassic to Late Cretaceous. Some members include ''Camptosaurus'', ''Dryosaurus'', ''Iguanodon'', '' Tenontosaurus'', and the hadrosaurids or "duck-bil ...

ancestral to

hadrosaurid Hadrosaurids (), or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod family, which inclu ...

s, which also contributes to the hypothesis that hadrosauroids originated in Asia. Fossils have been found in the

Bayin-Gobi Formation The Bayin-Gobi Formation () (also known as Bayan Gobi, or Bayingebi Formation) is a geological formation in Inner Mongolia, north China, whose strata date back to Albian of the Early Cretaceous period. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that ha ...

in 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 ...

. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

, ''Penelopognathus weishampeli'', named after

David Weishampel Professor David Bruce Weishampel (born November 16, 1952) is an American palaeontologist in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Weishampel received his Ph.D. in Geology from the Univers ...

, was described by Godefroit, Li, and Shang in 2005, based on fragmentary jaw fossils. Godefroit, P., Li, H., and Shang, C.Y. (2005). "A new primitive hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Inner Mongolia (P.R. China)". ''Comptes Rendus Palevol'' 4(8):697-705. . Its jaw is similar to that of '' Altirhinus'' and '' Probactrosaurus'', suggesting that ''Penelopognathus'' was related to the two genera. Prieto-Márquez and Carrera Farias (2021) found that ''

Telmatosaurus ''Telmatosaurus'' (meaning "marsh lizard") is a genus of basal hadrosauromorph dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Romania. It was a relatively small hadrosaur, measuring approximately in length and in body mass, which has been explained as a ...

'' was the sister taxon to ''Penelopognathus'', which was also found to be closely related to ''

Lophorhothon ''Lophorhothon'' is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, the first genus of dinosaur discovered in Alabama, in the United States. Discovery and naming Remains of this small, poorly known perhaps saurolophine dinosaur ...

'', as opposed to ''

Tethyshadros ''Tethyshadros'' ("Tethys Ocean, Tethyan hadrosauroid") is a genus of hadrosauroidea, hadrosauroid dinosaur from Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is ''T. insularis''. Discovery and naming Sometime in the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgi ...

''. ''Penelopognathus'' grew up to around long and around tall when fully grown.

References

Iguanodonts Early Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2005 Taxa named by Pascal Godefroit Paleontology in Inner Mongolia Ornithischian genera {{ornithopod-stub