Pronunciation: TEN-gree-SOR-us Meaning: Tengri lizard Author/s: Averianov and Skutschas (2017) Synonyms: None known First Discovery: Buryatia, Russia Chart Position: 921

Tengrisaurus starkovi

Tengrisaurus is derived from "Tengri" (the primary chief deity in Mongolian-Turkish mythology) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The species epithet, starkovi, honours Alexey I. Starkov for his generous assistance during the field work of 1998 and 1999, and his contribution to the study of Early Cretaceous vertebrates of Transbaikalia. The remains of Tengrisaurus were discovered in the Mogoito Member of the Murtoi Formation, Kanon Ravine, near Lake Gusinoe, Buryatia, Transbaikalia (eastern Russia).
The holotype (ZIN PH 7/13) is a tail vertebra found by Dmitriev in 1959.
Referred material includes ZIN PH 14/13 (a tail vertebra found by Skutschas and Sazonov in 1998) and ZIN PH 8/13 (another tail vertebra discovered by Starkov in 1992 and assigned to cf. Chiayusaurus sp. by Lev Nessov in 1995 and "Titanosauridae indet." by Averianov et al. in 2003) from the same six-meter-long outcrop as the holotype. Dmitriev also discovered a "massive" sauropod vertebra (BM 38/7120) at the Mogoito locality in 1959, but its whereabouts was a mystery until Korolkov et al. noted its presence at the Baikal Museum—the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences—in Listvyanka in 2016. Averianov, Sizov and Skutschas assigned the latter to Tengrisaurus in 2021.