Pinacosaurus

plank lizard

• pinax (pinak-) · Greek · board, plank
• sauros · Greek · lizard

The name combines the Greek "pinax" (a board or plank, from the stem "pinak-") with "sauros" (lizard), so it means "plank lizard". It was coined by Charles Gilmore in 1933 for an armoured dinosaur found in Mongolia by the American Museum of Natural History's Central Asiatic Expeditions. The type species, P. grangeri, honours expedition palaeontologist Walter Granger.

Named by

Gilmore

Year named

1933

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stage

Campanian

Found in

Djadochta Formation (Bayan Dzak/Shabarakh Usu), Mongolia, and Wulansuhai Formation (Bayan Mandahu), Inner Mongolia, China

A valid ankylosaurid (armoured dinosaur). Type species is P. grangeri; a second species, P. mephistocephalus, is known from China. I am not certain which anatomical feature Gilmore had in mind when choosing "plank".