Pronunciation: DZUH-JOON-go-SOR-us
Meaning: Zizhong (County) lizard
Author/s: Dong et al. (1983)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Zizhong, China
Discovery Chart Position: #308
Zizhongosaurus chuanchengensis
After being misspelt Zishongosaurus just a couple of lines into its official 1983 description by Zhiming Dong, Zizhongosaurus managed to avoid further embarrassment by cunningly getting itself ignored by almost all palaeontologists ever since. That wasn't too difficult, because its fossils aren't the best. But they're not the worst either, and other dinosaurs have been afforded far more attention on the strength of much less.
Zizhongosaurus is based on the distinct spine of a back vertebra that flares out into a paddle towards the end, the partial shaft of an upper arm, and a hip bone, which Dong described as the property of a "small primitive sauropod" and provisionally assigned to Cetiosaurinae: a group of chunky sauropods known colloquially as "whale lizards". For the record, cetiosaurines are nothing like whales, and Zizhongosaurus isn't much like any known cetiosaurine, either. Subsequent research nudged it towards Vulcanodontidae, or sometimes Shunosaurinae.
A second species—Zizhongosaurus huangshibanensis—was mentioned by Li Kui way back in 1999, but remains naked (in a literary sense), having yet to be enrobed in a formal description.
Zizhongosaurus is based on the distinct spine of a back vertebra that flares out into a paddle towards the end, the partial shaft of an upper arm, and a hip bone, which Dong described as the property of a "small primitive sauropod" and provisionally assigned to Cetiosaurinae: a group of chunky sauropods known colloquially as "whale lizards". For the record, cetiosaurines are nothing like whales, and Zizhongosaurus isn't much like any known cetiosaurine, either. Subsequent research nudged it towards Vulcanodontidae, or sometimes Shunosaurinae.
A second species—Zizhongosaurus huangshibanensis—was mentioned by Li Kui way back in 1999, but remains naked (in a literary sense), having yet to be enrobed in a formal description.
(Zizhong lizard from Chuancheng)Etymology
Zizhongosaurus is derived from "Zizhong" (for Zizhong County) and the Greek "saurus" (lizard).
The species epithet, chuanchengensis, is derived from "Chuancheng" (a town known to locals as "Boat City" because of its location on the roughly boat-shaped Mount Yuezhongloushan) and the Latin "ensis" (from).
Discovery
The remains of Zizhongosaurus were discovered in the Daanzhai Member of the Ziliujing Formation, Luochuanjing, Zizhong County, Sichuan Province, China.
The holotype (V9067.1-3) includes the spine of a dorsal (back) vertebra, a partial right humerus (upper arm bone), a pubis (hip bone), and several other fragments, probably (though not certainly) from the same individual.
