Barsboldia (meaning "of Rinchen Barsbold", a well-known Mongolian people paleontologist) is a genus of large hadrosaurid dinosaur from the Maastrichtian Nemegt Formation of Ömnogöv', Mongolia. It is known from a partial column, partial pelvis, and some Rib cage.
Discovery
In 1970, a Polish-Mongolian expedition near the Nemegt found the skeleton of an ornithopod and first assigned it to
Saurolophus angustirostris. However, two Polish paleontologists, Teresa Maryańska and Halszka Osmólska, came to the conclusion that it was a
Lambeosaurinae that had to represent a separate species. They named and described
Barsboldia sicinskii based on the holotype specimen ZPAL MgD-1/110. The genus name honors the Mongolian paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold, while the species name honors Wojciech Siciński, the technician at the Warsaw Paleobiological Institute who prepared the skeleton. The holotype specimen, found in a layer of the
Nemegt Formation dating to the early Maastrichtian, consisted of a partial skeleton consisting of nine back
, nine
sacrum, fifteen tail vertebrae, a left ilium, parts of the left and right pubis, several ribs, and a few fragments of the hind limbs, with the backbone largely articulated. The anterior and posteriormost portions of the skeleton were lost due to erosion.
Description
Barsboldia was a large hadrosaur, previously estimated at in length and in body mass.
In 2011, the tibial length was measured at , rivaling that of
Shantungosaurus at and that of
Magnapaulia at ; this indicates that
Barsboldia could have possibly reached within the range of in total body length.
Similar to
Ouranosaurus, the most distinctive features of
Barsboldia are found in the
spinous process. These are very tall, particularly over the hips, and were described as second only to those of
Hypacrosaurus altispinus and the tips of those found in the first few vertebrae of the tail are club-shaped,
[ possibly a sign of old age.]
Phylogeny
Maryańska and Osmólska described their new genus as a lambeosaurinae (or hollow-crested duckbill), the first from the Nemegt Formation, although it lacked a skull. However, the sacrum has a keel along the bottom, a possible lambeosaurine feature,[ or a possible lambeosaurine of uncertain placement.]
The following cladogram was recovered in the 2011 phylogenetic analysis of Hadrosauroidea by Prieto-Márquez (the relationships within Lambeosaurinae and between basal hadrosauroids aren't shown).[
]
Paleobiology
As a hadrosaurid, Barsboldia would have been a large bipedalism/ herbivore, eating with a sophisticated skull that permitted a grinding motion analogous to mastication, and was furnished with hundreds of continually-replaced tooth. If it was a lambeosaurine, it would have had a hollow crest formed out of expanded skull bones containing the nasal passages, with a function relating to identification by sight and sound.[
]
See also
-
Timeline of hadrosaur research
