Nurosaurus

Nuro lizard

• Nuro · Chinese/Mongolian place name · the Nuro (Elegen) River, Inner Mongolia, China
• saurus · Greek · lizard

Nurosaurus is named after the Nuro (also written Elegen) River in Inner Mongolia, China, near the site where its fossils were discovered. The second part of the name, '-saurus', comes from the Greek word 'sauros', meaning 'lizard', which is a very common suffix in dinosaur names. The name therefore translates roughly as 'Nuro River lizard'. It was named to honour the geographic origin of the specimen.

Named by

Dong

Year named

1992

Period

Early Cretaceous

Found in

Inner Mongolia, China

Nurosaurus is a large sauropod dinosaur (mamenchisaurid or possibly a somphospondylan). It was described by Dong Zhiming in 1992 from a partial skeleton. The genus is often considered a nomen dubium because the original description was brief and the material has not been fully formally redescribed; some sources also list it as potentially synonymous with other Chinese sauropods, but no firm synonymy has been established. Confidence is medium due to the limited published literature widely available on this taxon.