Open Paleo

Kazaklambia

Bell & Brink, 2013 kah-zak-LAM-bee-uh

Named for Kazakhstan, where the fossils were found, combined with the genus name Lambeosaurus (a related lambeosaurine dinosaur), meaning 'Kazakhstan Lambeosaurus'.

89.8–83.6 million years ago Coniacian–Santonian, Late Cretaceous
Late Cretaceous stages

Kazaklambia is an extinct genus of herbivorous lambeosaurine dinosaur known from the Late Cretaceous Darbazin Formation (Santonian stage) of southern Kazakhstan. It contains a single species, Kazaklambia convincens.

Diagnosis

  1. Prefrontal process of postorbital with dorsal thickening forming dome lateral to frontal dome
  2. Doming of nasal anterodorsal to orbit
  3. Frontal length/width ratio less than 1
  4. Crest height better-developed than North American lambeosaurines of similar juvenile size
  5. Presphenoid at least as long as orbitosphenoid, roughly equidimensional

Species

Kazaklambia convincens Bell & Brink, 2013

Type species

From Latin 'convincens' meaning 'convincing', as the discovery was considered convincing evidence of the Cretaceous age of the Darbazin Formation dinosaur beds in Kazakhstan.

Holotype
PIN 2230 , Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences
Material
Virtually complete skull and skeleton of an immature individual lacking most of the preorbital region of the skull, distal parts of the forelimbs, distal left hindlimb, and distal caudal vertebrae
Horizon
Darbazin Formation, Coniacian–Santonian, Late Cretaceous , 89.8–83.6 million years ago
Locality
Syuk-Syuk, Turkistan, Kazakhstan The holotype lies at the contact of two superposed formations, and the readings differ over which side of it the skeleton lies. Rozhdestvensky (1964) assigned it to the lower part of the Darbazin Formation and the Stratigraphic Dictionary of the USSR, edited by Vereshchagin (1979), to the underlying Syuk-Syuk Formation, with Nessov (1995) recording both readings for the Syuk-Syuk well site. Both units are Santonian. Bell and colleagues (2013) follow the Darbazin reading, which the record follows.

References

  1. Bell, P. R.; Brink, K. S. (2013). Kazaklambia convincens comb. nov., a primitive juvenile lambeosaurine from the Santonian of Kazakhstan. Cretaceous Research 45: 265-274. Elsevier BV. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2013.05.003 bell2013a
  2. Nessov, L. A. (1995). Dinozavri severnoi Yevrazii: Novye dannye o sostave kompleksov, ekologii i paleobiogeografii [Dinosaurs of northern Eurasia: new data about assemblages, ecology, and paleobiogeography]. Institute for Scientific Research on the Earth's Crust, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg 1-156.

    Catalog of the Syuk-Syuk locality, recording both the Darbazin and Syuk-Syuk assignments for the horizon.

    nessov1995a
  3. Jones, B. (2026). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: Ornithischians. Princeton University Press.

    Source of the body length estimate, and the appearance features.

    jones2026a
  4. Vereshchagin, V. N. (chief editor) (1979). Stratigraficheskii slovar' SSSR: Trias, Yura, Mel [Stratigraphic Dictionary of the USSR: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous]. 592 pp. Nedra, Leningrad. vereshchagin1979a
  5. Rozhdestvensky, A. K. (1964). [New data on occurrences of dinosaurs in Kazakhstan and Central Asia]. Tashkentskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet, Nauchnye Trudy: Geologiya [Tashkent State University, Scientific Publications: Geology] (234): 227-241. rozhdestvensky1964a