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Tarchia

Name: »brain«

Length: 8 – 8.5 m

Height: 2.5 m

Weight: 4.5 tons

Diet: herbivore

Time: Cretaceous (70 MYA)

Location: Asia

http://www.wikidino.com/wp-content/uploads/Tarchia-1.jpg

http://www.wikidino.com/…/upl…/Tarchia-Sergey-Krasovskiy.jpg

Dinosaur stuff

Tarchia (pronounced: Tar-chee-uh; meaning “brain”) is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur from the late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is currently the geologically youngest known of all the Asian ankylosaurid dinosaurs and is represented by five or more specimens, including two complete skulls and one nearly complete postcranial skeleton. This is also one of the largest known Asian ankylosaurs, with an estimated body length of 8-8.5 meters (26-28 ft), a skull length of 40 centimeters (16 in), and skull width of 45 centimeters (18 in). Tarchia may have weighed as much as 4,500 kilograms (9,900 lb). Named for its massive skull (Mongolian tarkhi meaning ‘brain’ and Latin ia), Tarchia currently includes only the type species, T. gigantea. It was discovered in the Upper Cretaceous (possibly Campanian-Maastrichtian) Barun Goyot Formation (previously known as the ‘Lower Nemegt Beds’) of the Nemegt Basin of Mongolia. The rocks in which they were found likely represent eolian dunes and interdune environments, with small intermittent lakes and seasonal streams. Hence, we know that Tarchia was a desert animal. The morphology of cranial sculpturing seen in Tarchia, an assortment of bulbous polygons, is reminiscent of that of Saichania chulsanensis, another ankylosaurid from the Barun Goyot Formation. Tarchia is distinguished from Saichania on the basis of its relatively larger basicranium, an unfused paroccipital process-quadrate contact and that the premaxillary rostrum is wider than the maximum distance between the tooth rows in the maxillaries. In Tarchia, wear facets indicative of tooth-to-tooth occlusion is present (Barret, 2001).

Tarchia was a large, armored dinosaur that lived in Asia. This plant-eater seems to have been a common dinosaur and quite was similar to Ankylosaurus. It was another member of the family of dinosaurs that were built low to the ground with thick, bony scutes covering much of their back and neck. It also had a fearsome weapon to protect itself, a heavy, bony club on the end of its tail that when swung could have broken the bones of any animal that tried to attack it.

Tarchia seemed to have a larger brain than other members of its family do, and its skull seems to support the theory that ankylosaur heads became more massive as they evolved.

Taxonomy and phylogenetics

Vickaryous et al. (2004) state that two distinct clades of Late Cretaceous ankylosaurids are nested deep to Tarchia, one comprising North American taxa (Ankylosaurus, Euoplocephalus) and the other comprising Asian taxa (Pinacosaurus spp., Saichania, Tianzhenosaurus, Talarurus). Dyoplosaurus giganteus is considered a synonym of Tarchia and a second proposed species of Tarchia, T. kielanae has been found to be the same as T. gigantea (Vickaryous et al., 2004).

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Ornithischia

Suborder: Thyreophora

Infraorder: Ankylosauria

Family: Ankylosauridae

Genus: Tarchia Maryanska, 1977

Species: T. gigantea Maryanska, 1977