Paleontologists have discovered a fragmentary skeleton of a new lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur in the Upper Cretaceous Dalangshan Formation of southern China.
Skeletal material present in the lambeosaurine specimen from the Upper Cretaceous Dalangshan Formation of southern China. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1080/08912963.2025.2454652.
The fragmentary skeleton of a single hadrosaurid individual was unearthed at the Taipinggang site of the Dalangshan Formation near Zhaoqing city, Guangdong province, China.
The specimen is between 70 and 67 million years old (Maastrichtian age), and includes vertebrae, a humerus, ilium, femur and tibia.
“The specimen was collected from the Sanshui Basin in the northwestern part of the Pearl River Delta in South China, which is the closest inland basin to the South China Sea in the South China Land Source,” said China University of Geosciences paleontologist Donghao Wang and colleagues.
“A large area of Upper Cretaceous layers divided into two large depositional zones, occurs within it.”
“The stratigraphy is well understood, but few vertebrate fossils have been found, save for the aforementioned tyrannosauroid teeth from the Taipinggang site.”
“The new lambeosaurine was found in red gravel in the second member of the Dalangshan Formation.”
The individual was a member of the tribe Lambeosaurini, which is otherwise poorly represented in the Chinese fossil record.
“The fossil record of Hadrosauroidea occurs throughout the upper Lower and Upper Cretaceous layers globally,” the paleontologists said.
“Hadrosauroids consist of graded basal members and the derived Hadrosauridae, the latter of which consists of the Lambeosaurinae and Hadrosaurinae or Saurolophinae.”
“The most distinguishing character uniting lambeosaurine hadrosaurids is the hollow supracranial crest, formed by the paired premaxillae and nasals, that may have functioned in acoustic and/or visual signaling.”
“The fossil record of the Lambeosaurinae extends from the Santonian to the Maastrichtian.”
“So far, four species have been found in China: Charonosaurus jiayinensis, Jaxartosaurus sp., Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus, and Sahaliyania elunchunorum.”
According to the researchers, the new specimen is the first lambeosaurine known from South China.
“It represents the first hadrosauroid from the Sanshui Basin and the first lambeosaurine from South China,” they said.
“This specimen suggests the potential for future fossil discoveries in the Cretaceous deposits in the Sanshui Basin and indicates that this area was once home to a typical Late Cretaceous Laurasian dinosaur fauna.”
The team’s paper was published in the journal Historical Biology.
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Donghao Wang et al. 2025. First occurrence of the duck-billed dinosaur tribe Lambeosaurini (Hadrosauridae: Lambeosaurinae) in South China. Historical Biology, published online January 25, 2025; doi: 10.1080/08912963.2025.2454652
