Pronunciation: bah-TEE-row-SOR-us
Meaning: Batyr (Kazakh knight) lizard
Author/s: Godefroit et al. (2012)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan
Discovery Chart Position: #792
Batyrosaurus rozhdestvenskyi
(Rozhdestvensky's batyr lizard)Etymology
Batyrosaurus is derived from "batyrs" ("heroic Kazakhstan knights", soldiers of common origin whose social status was upgraded based on their military exploits) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard). Incidently, Batyr is also the name of an elephant, one-time resident of Kazakhstan's Karaganda Zoo, who astounded visitors with an apparent ability to "speak" twenty-odd human words and phrases... until zookeepers accidentally gave him a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in 1993!
The species epithet, rozhdestvenskyi, honours Russian paleontologist Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky.
Discovery
The remains of Batyrosaurus were discovered in the Bostobe Formation (aka Bostobinskaya Svita) at Akkurgan, 135km north of the Dzhusala railway station, Kyzylorda (formerly Kzyl-Orda) oblast (region), east of the Aral Sea, Kazakhstan.
The holotype (AEHM 4/1) is a fragmentary skeleton including a partial skull and lower jaw, sixty teeth, a right humerus (upper arm bone), left radius (one of two forearm bones), and some finger bones.
