Paleo Profile: Huanansaurus ganzhouensis

In their description of Huanansaurus, Junchang Lü and colleagues point out that China’s Nanxiong Formation has yielded at least six different genera of oviraptorosaurs in recent years – Banji, Ganzhousaurus, Jiangxisaurus, Nankangia, Shixinggia, and, now, Huanansaurus. It’s a greater diversity of these beaked theropods than anywhere else.

Why so many oviraptorosaurs have come out of the Ganzhou region isn’t clear, and multiple possibilities come into play. The dating of these fossils isn’t very precise, so maybe the six different oviraptorosaurs lived in the same place but at different times. And perhaps some of them will turn out to be synonyms of each other. Fragmentary skeletons and the relatively small sample sizes

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