Arstanosaurus
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Arstanosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous |
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| Juvenile hadrosaur assigned to Arstanosaurus sp., informally known as "Gadolosaurus" | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Ornithischia |
| Family: | ?Hadrosauridae |
| Genus: |
Arstanosaurus Shilin & Suslov, 1982 |
| Binomial name | |
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Arstanosaurus akkurganensis Shilin & Suslov, 1982 |
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Arstanosaurus (meaning "Arstan lizard" after the Arstan well) is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur from the Santonian-Campanian-age Upper Cretaceous Bostobinskaya Formation, Kazakhstan. It has had a confusing history, being considered both a hadrosaurid and a ceratopsid, or both at the same time (chimeric).
The genus was based on a partial left maxilla (holotype AAIZ 1/1 or IZ AN KSSR 1/1), with the lower end of a left femur (AAIZ 1/2) possibly referable. Both were found at Akkurgan-Boltyk near Qyzylorda. This is not much material for naming a new genus, and it was largely ignored until the mid-1990s, when the hypothesis that it was really a ceratopsid appeared. Shortly thereafter, a new revision appeared that showed that the characteristics listed as unusual for Arstanosaurus were really based on perspective, and that the maxilla was from an animal like Bactrosaurus, albeit indeterminate (a dubious name). The femur was uninformative. It was regarded as an indeterminate hadrosaurid in the most recent review.
Diagnostic hadrosauroid remains from the same area have in 2012 been named as Batyrosaurus.
A juvenile skeleton from Mongolia has been attributed to Arstanosaurus, but on what grounds is unknown. It is under study. The informal genus name "Gadolosaurus" has been used for this skeleton. Though the name was made public in 1979, it has never been formally described, and the name is considered a nomen nudum. The name "Gadolosaurus" first appeared in a book by Japanese paleontologist Tsunemasa Saito. It came from a caption to a photo of a juvenile dinosaur skeleton; this small individual was only about a meter long (39 inches). The skeleton was part of an Soviet exhibition of fossils in Japan. Apparently, the name comes from a Japanese phonetic translation of the Cyrillic word "gadrosavr", or hadrosaur, and was never meant by the Russians to establish a new generic name.
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