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Yanbeilong (meaning "north of Yanmen Pass dragon") is an extinct genus of stegosaurian dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous (Albian age) Zuoyun Formation of Shanxi, China. The genus contains a Monotypic taxon, Yanbeilong ultimus, known from a single partial skeleton including several vertebrae and the pelvic girdle. It is one of the youngest known stegosaurs, alongside Mongolostegus from Mongolia and unnamed stegosaurine remains from the Hekou Group of China, both of which date to the Aptian–Albian ages.
In 2024, Lei Jia and colleagues described Yanbeilong ultimus as a new genus and species of stegosaur based on these fossil remains. The Genus, " Yanbeilong", combines the Chinese language "Yanbei", meaning "North of Yanmen Pass"—referencing the general area of the type locality—and "long", meaning "dragon". The specific name, " ultimus", is a Latin word meaning "last", referencing the fact that this taxon represents a late-surviving member of the stegosaur lineage.
Classification
In their phylogenetic analyses, Jia et al. (2024) recovered Yanbeilong as a deeply-nested member of the Stegosauria, as the sister taxon to a clade containing Stegosaurus stenops and Wuerhosaurus. An updated and more comprehensive analysis published the following year recovered similar results, with Yanbeilong as the sister taxon to Wuerhosaurus, in a Chinese clade within the Stegosaurinae also containing Jiangjunosaurus and an unnamed taxon from the Hekou Group. These results are shown in the cladogram below:
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