Zaraapelta

Zaraapelta is an extinct genus of herbivorous ankylosaurid thyreophoran dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. The type species is Zaraapelta nomadis, named and described by Arbour et alii in 2014. Zaraapelta is known from a single skull from the Barun Goyot Formation. It was found to be closest to Tarchia in the phylogenetic analysis within its description.

In 2000, Robert Gabbard, member of a team headed by Philip John Currie, found an ankylosaur skull in the Gobi Desert near Hermiin Tsav at the Baruungoyot. In 2014, Victoria Megan Arbour named and described the find as the species Zaraapelta nomadis, but at first it remained an invalid nomen ex dissertatione. Later that year, however, it was validly named as the type species Zaraapelta nomadis by Arbour, Currie and, posthumously, the female Mongolian paleontologist Demchig Badamgarav. The generic name is derived from Mongolian zaraa, "hedgehog", in reference to the prickly appearance of ankylosaurs, and the Greek πέλτη, peltè, "small shield", a common component of ankylosaurian names in view of their body armour. The specific name nomadis is the genitive of the Latin nomas, "nomad" and refers to the Nomadic Expeditions travel agency that has organised many palaeontological expeditions to Mongolia.

The holotype, MPC D-100/1388, was found in a layer of the Barun Goyot Formation, dating from the mid to late Campanian, about seventy-five million years old. It consists of a skull lacking the snout tip. No elements of the lower jaws were discovered. The specimen probably represents a subadult individual.