Tanius

Name: Tanius ‭(‬After the palaeontologist Tan Xichou‭)‬.
Phonetic: Tan-e-us.
Named By: Carl Wiman‭ ‬-‭ ‬1929.‭
Classification: Chordata,‭ ‬Reptilia,‭ ‬Dinosauria,‭ ‬Ornithischia,‭ ‬Ornithopoda,‭ ‬Hadrosauroidea,‭ ‬Hadrosauridae‭?
Species: T.‭ ‬sinensis‭ (‬type‭)‬.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Estimated at around‭ ‬7‭ ‬meters long.
Known locations: China,‭ ‬Shandong Province.
Time period: Campanian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Initially the back of the skull,‭ ‬further remains have been attributed to the genus.

       Tanius is one of the many known Asian hadrosauroid dinosaurs,‭ ‬but one that is not very well represented.‭ ‬The initial description was based upon the back of the skull which seems to be that of a flat headed hadrosauroid dinosaur,‭ ‬the kind roughly between the earlier iguanodonts and the more advanced hadrosaurids.‭ ‬However the incomplete nature of the remains has also led to speculation that Tanius may actually be a hadrosaurid in its own right,‭ ‬possibly one of the saurolophines because of the seemingly flat head.
       At one time the lambeosaurine hadrosaurid Tsintaosaurus was considered by some to be a synonym to the genus Tanius.‭ ‬This was based upon the idea the crest of Tsintaosaurus was merely another bone that had become fossilised next to the skull to give the impression of a crest.‭ ‬However,‭ ‬when a second specimen identical to the first was found,‭ ‬the crest was definitely not a product of the fossilisation,‭ ‬and palaeontologists are today satisfied with treating the two genera as separate.‭ ‬Additionally however,‭ ‬another species of Tanius called T.‭ ‬spinorhinus is now considered a synonym of Tsintaosaurus,‭ ‬with the other species T.‭ ‬chingkankouensis and T.‭ ‬laiyangensis also being considered to be the same as Tsintaosaurus.‭ ‬Another species,‭ ‬T.‭ ‬prynadai,‭ ‬has now been moved to the genus Bactrosaurus.

Further reading
Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus Young and Tanius sinensis Wiman:‭ ‬a preliminary comparative study of two hadrosaurs‭ (‬Dinosauria‭) ‬from the Upper Cretaceous of China,‭ ‬E.‭ ‬Buffetaut‭ & ‬H.‭ ‬Tong‭ ‬- ‭‬1993.
- Review of historical and current research on the Late Cretaceous dinosaurs and dinosaur eggs from Laiyang, Shandong. - Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 55 (2): 187–200. - J. L. Zhang, Q. Wang, S. X. Jiang, X. Cheng, N. Li, R. Qiu, X. J. Zhang & X. L. Wang - 2017.
- Osteological re‐assessment and taxonomic tevision of ‘Tanius laiyangensis’ (Ornithischia: Hadrosauroidea) from the Upper Cretaceous of Shandong, China. - The Anatomical Record. - Yu-Guang Zhang, Ke-Bai Wang, Shu-Qing Chen, Liu Di & hai Xing - 2019.

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