''Batyrosaurus'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

of herbivorous

basal Basal or basilar is a term meaning ''base'', ''bottom'', or ''minimum''. Science * Basal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure * Basal (medicine), a minimal level that is nec ...

hadrosauroid Hadrosauroidea is a clade or superfamily of ornithischian dinosaurs that includes the "duck-billed" dinosaurs, or hadrosaurids, and all dinosaurs more closely related to them than to ''Iguanodon''. Their remains have been recovered in Asia, Euro ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

known from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

Bostobe Formation The Bostobe Formation ( kk, Boztóbe svıtasy) is a geological formation in Qaraghandy & Qyzylorda, Kazakhastan whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous (Santonian to early Campanian stages, approximately 85 Ma). The sandstones and clayston ...

(

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya (million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 mya. ...

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

stage) of central

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental coun ...

. It contains a single species, ''Batyrosaurus rozhdestvenskyi''. It is possible that ''Batyrosaurus'' represents the same taxon as the doubtful '' Arstanosaurus akkurganensis'' as both were found from the same formation. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...

''Batyrosaurus rozhdestvenskyi'' was in 2012 named and described by

Pascal Godefroit Pascal Godefroit is a Belgian paleontologist. He discovered dinosaurs like ''Olorotitan'' in 2003. Godefroit is the director of earth and life sciences at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. See also *Taxa named by Pascal Godefroit ...

François Escuillié François () is a French language, French masculine given name and surname, equivalent to the English name Francis (given name), Francis. People with the given name * Francis I of France, King of France (), known as "the Father and Restorer of ...

Yuri Bolotsky Yuri may refer to: People and fictional characters Given name *Yuri (Slavic name), the Slavic masculine form of the given name George, including a list of people with the given name Yuri, Yury, etc. * Yuri (Japanese name), also Yūri, feminine Ja ...

and Pascaline Lauters. The generic name is derived from the ''

Batyr Batyr (May 24, 1970 – August 26, 1993) was an Asian elephant claimed to be able to use a large amount of meaningful human speech. Living in a zoo in Kazakhstan in the Soviet Union, Batyr was reported as having a vocabulary of more than 20 ...

'', the

Kazakh Kazakh, Qazaq or Kazakhstani may refer to: * Someone or something related to Kazakhstan *Kazakhs, an ethnic group *Kazakh language *The Kazakh Khanate * Kazakh cuisine * Qazakh Rayon, Azerbaijan *Qazax, Azerbaijan *Kazakh Uyezd, administrative dis ...

hero warriors. The specific name honours

Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky (russian: Анатолий Константинович Рождественский, 1920–1983) was a Soviet paleontologist responsible for naming many dinosaurs, including ''Aralosaurus ''Aralosaurus'' w ...

. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

, AEHM 4/1, was found near Akkurgan in a layer of the Bostobinskaya Formation dating from the Santonian-Campanian, about eighty-four millions year old. It consists of a partial skeleton, including a partial skull, the lower jaws, sixty individual teeth, the sterna, the right humerus, the left radius, metacarpals and phalanges. The authors considered ''Arstanosaurus akkurganensis'' a ''

nomen dubium In binomial nomenclature, a ''nomen dubium'' (Latin for "doubtful name", plural ''nomina dubia'') is a scientific name that is of unknown or doubtful application. Zoology In case of a ''nomen dubium'' it may be impossible to determine whether a s ...

'' and did not refer its material. ''Batyrosaurus'' is a medium-sized hadrosauroid of about five to six metres length. Several

autapomorphies In phylogenetics, an autapomorphy is a distinctive feature, known as a derived trait, that is unique to a given taxon. That is, it is found only in one taxon, but not found in any others or outgroup taxa, not even those most closely related to t ...

, unique derived traits, were established. The

parietal bone The parietal bones () are two bones in the skull which, when joined at a fibrous joint, form the sides and roof of the cranium. In humans, each bone is roughly quadrilateral in form, and has two surfaces, four borders, and four angles. It is named ...

s at their rear form bony flaps that overlap the supraoccipital but do not touch the sides of the paraoccipitals and are themselves overlapped by the

squamosal The squamosal is a skull bone found in most reptiles, amphibians, and birds. In fishes, it is also called the pterotic bone. In most tetrapods, the squamosal and quadratojugal bones form the cheek series of the skull. The bone forms an ancestral co ...

s. The

frontal bone The frontal bone is a bone in the human skull. The bone consists of two portions.'' Gray's Anatomy'' (1918) These are the vertically oriented squamous part, and the horizontally oriented orbital part, making up the bony part of the forehead, pa ...

s are elongated, about 70% longer than wide. The outer side of the front branch of the

jugal The jugal is a skull bone found in most reptiles, amphibians and birds. In mammals, the jugal is often called the malar or zygomatic. It is connected to the quadratojugal and maxilla, as well as other bones, which may vary by species. Anat ...

shows a deep horizontal trough below the suture with the lacrimal. The joint surface of the

surangular The suprangular or surangular is a jaw bone found in most land vertebrates, except mammals. Usually in the back of the jaw, on the upper edge, it is connected to all other jaw bones: dentary, angular, splenial and articular The articular bone ...

is pierced by a

foramen In anatomy and osteology, a foramen (;Entry "foramen"
in

. Among the material found was an about four centimetres long thumb claw. A cast was made of the braincase, showing fine arterial impressions on its inner surface, indicating it was almost completely filled by brain tissue. A

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived ch ...

analysis showed that ''Batyrosaurus'' had a basal position in the

Hadrosauroidea Hadrosauroidea is a clade or superfamily of ornithischian dinosaurs that includes the "duck-billed" dinosaurs, or hadrosaurids, and all dinosaurs more closely related to them than to '' Iguanodon''. Their remains have been recovered in Asia, Euro ...

, above ''

Altirhinus ''Altirhinus'' (; "high snout") is a genus of hadrosauroid ornithopod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous period of Mongolia. History of discovery All known specimens of ''Altirhinus'' were recovered in 1981 during collaborative expeditions organ ...

'' but below ''

Probactrosaurus ''Probactrosaurus'' (meaning "before '' Bactrosaurus''") is an early herbivorous hadrosauroid iguanodont dinosaur. It lived in China during the Late Cretaceous period. Discovery and species In 1959 and 1960 a Soviet-Chinese expedition uncov ...

'' in the evolutionary tree. As ''

Tethyshadros ''Tethyshadros'' (" Tethyan hadrosauroid") is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from Trieste, Italy. The type and only species is ''T. insularis''. Discovery and naming Sometime in the 1980s, Alceo Tarlao and Giorgio Rimoli reported finding fra ...

'' in their analysis was a

hadrosaurid Hadrosaurids (), or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod family, which incl ...

, the authors considered ''Batyrosaurus'' to be the youngest known non-hadrosaurid hadrosauroid. This was seen as an indication that not only hadrosauroids but also hadrosaurids originally developed in Asia and only later migrated to

North-America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Ca ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3278364 Fossil taxa described in 2012 Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Asia Hadrosaurs Ornithischian genera