#talarurus

Saurgust day 8, Talarurus plicatospineus. My greatest enemy... ankylosaurs...

Welcome to DinApril 2026, where instead of recycling my list from last year, I made my father come up with the dinosaurs! Our twenty-fourth day features a dinosaur that was named in the year my father was born: Talarurus plicatospineus! This male is standing next to a sign reading "1952", the year his species was formally described and the year that my father was born.

Talarurus was an easy choice because it's one of only two valid species of dinosaurs named from 1952 and the only new valid genus from that time (excluding birds, of course).

By Jack Wood on @thewoodparable

PLEASE SUPPORT US ON PATREON. EACH and EVERY DONATION helps to keep this blog running! Any amount, even ONE DOLLAR is APPRECIATED! IF YOU ENJOY THIS CONTENT, please CONSIDER DONATING!

Name: Talarurus plicatospineus

Name Meaning: Wicker Tail

First Described: 1952

Described By: Maleev

Classification: Dinosauria, Ornithischia, Genasauria, Thyreophora, Eurypoda, Ankylosauria, Ankylosauridae, Ankylosaurinae, Ankylosaurini

Talarurus is a rather interestingly proportioned Ankylosaur from the Byan Shiree Formation of Mongolia, living sometime around the Santonian age of the Late Cretacoues, perhaps about 86 million years ago (though the exact timing is under some debate). It is known from multiple specimens, showing much of the skull and skeleton, as well as osteoderms, though the original specimen is poorly preserved. It has distinct ornaments on its head, including small tubercular osteoderms on the roof of the skull, and the armor tiles of the head being symmetrical and low on the nose and snout, and it has a V-shaped raised area on the front of the snout. 

By José Carlos Cortés on @ryuukibart

Talarurus was about five meters long, with a long stiffened tail and a club at the end of it. It had a long and narrow skull, and is one of the oldest known Ankylosaurids from Asia, and though it is often displayed as looking like a Cotylorhynchus with osteoderms, it certainly would have had an upright gate, and probably wouldn’t have looked all that much different from other Ankylosaurids. It lived in a lowland floodplain environment (rather than a desert one like other Asian Ankylosaurids such as Saichania, which may indicate why it’s snout is significantly different from that group of Ankylosaurs). It lived alongside other dinosaurs such as Erlikosaurus, Garudimimus, Alectrosaurus, Amtosaurus, Segnosaurus, Achillobator, and Tsagantegia. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talarurus

https://paleobiodb.org/navigator/

Arbour, V. M, & P. J. Currie. 2015. Systematics, phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2015.1059985

Shout out goes to @loganslilangel!

Happy Easter everyone! And also happy Achillobator day! Achillobator is (in my opinion) one of the more underrated raptors, a giant dromaeosaurid from Mongolia that could have looked a person in the eye. And then eaten them. 

I’ve drawn an Achillobator in the middle of a tense battle with a Talarurus, a large ankylosaur. The Achillobator is making excellent use of RPR (Raptor Prey Restraint) by digging its claws in and flapping its wings madly to keep its balance. Not that it’ll do much good in this case, as the pair of them are about to topple off a small rocky ledge.

The wicker tail, Talarurus (1952)

Phylum : Chordata Class : Reptilia Order : Ornithischia Family : Ankylosauridae Subfamily : Ankylosaurinae Genus : Talarurus Species : T. plicatospineus

Late Cretaceous (90 Ma)

6 m long and 1 000 kg (size)

Bayan Shireh formation, Mongolia (map)

Talarurus remains have been discovered in the southeastern parts of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, so Talarurus may have lived there. Scientists assume that the habitat the Talarurus lived in were lowland floodplains millions of years ago because most Talarurus remains were found in the Gobi Desert's Bayan Shireh Formation. Rocks found in and around the Bayn Shire Formation date from about 95-88 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period. To figure out the age of Talarurus more accurately, dinosaur remains from similar-aged rocks somewhere else are required to be compared with Bayn Shire Formation dinosaur remains. Sadly, there are only a few places in the world that show animal life on land in the early part of the Late Cretaceous. Scientists conclude that Talarurus lived in lowland floodplains in the southeastern part of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, between 98-83 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period from all the information they have gathered currently.

The genus was discovered in the 1950s by a Soviet expedition, and is now known from five or more individual specimens, including two incomplete skulls, one nearly complete skeleton, and many osteoderms. Talarurus is presently one of the better-known ankylosaurs from Mongolia.

The skull of Talarurus measured approximately 24 centimetres in length by approximately 22 centimetres wide, and its body length has been estimated at 4 to 6 metres. This ankylosaurid had five toes on the forefoot and four on the hind foot. Additional diagnostic characteristics include dorsal vertebrae with transversely broad hypapophyses and osteoderms with furrowed ornamentation.