A new hadrosauroid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) from the Late Cretaceous Baynshire Formation of the Gobi Desert (Mongolia)

A new genus and species of non-hadrosaurid hadrosauroid, Gobihadros mongoliensis , is described from a virtually complete and undeformed skull and postcranial skeleton, as well as extensive referred material, collected from the Baynshire Formation (Cenomanian-Santonian) of the central and eastern Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Gobihadros mongoliensis is the first non-hadrosaurid hadrosauroid from the Late Cretaceous of central Asia known from a complete, articulated skull and skeleton. The material reveals the skeletal anatomy of a proximate sister taxon to Hadrosauridae in remarkable detail. Gobihadros is similar to Bactrosaurus johnsoni and Gilmoreosaurus mongoliensis , but can be distinguished from them in several autapomorphic traits, including the maximum number (three) of functional dentary teeth per tooth position, a premaxillary oral margin with a ‘double-layer morphology’, and a sigmoidal dorsal outline of the ilium with a well-developed, fan-shaped posterior process. All of these characters in Gobihadros are inferred to be convergent in Hadrosauridae. Phylogenetic analysis positions Gobihadros mongoliensis as a Bactrosaurus -grade hadrosauromorph hadrosauroid. Its relationship with Maastrichtian hadrosaurids from Asia (e.g., Saurolophus angustirostris , Kerberosaurus manakini , Wulagasaurus dongi , Kundurosaurus nagornyi ) are sufficiently distant to indicate that these latter taxa owe their distribution to migration from North America across Beringia, rather than having a common Asian origin with Go . mongoliensis .