In Depth
Barsboldia is so far only known from vertebrae and some fragmentary remains of other parts of the post cranial skeleton. At the time of writing no skull is known for the genus, yet the original describers still chose to class Barsboldia as a lambeosaurine hadrosaurid dinosaur. Later studies however have cast doubts about Barsboldia being a lambeosaruine and one in particular (Prieto-M�rquez, 2011) came to the conclusion that Barsboldia was actually a saurolophine hadrosaur. This makes a little more sense as by the Maastrichtian period of the Cretaceous, lambeosaurine hadrosaurs had been largely replaced by saurolophine hadrosaurs. This would mean that Barsboldia had a small solid bone crest if at all. However studies of the North American genus Edmontosaurus in the early twenty-first century have now proved that some species of saurolophine hadrosaurs had soft tissue crests which only rarely got preserved.
Coming from the Nemegt Formation, Barsboldia would have lived alongside other hadrosaurids such as Asian species of Saurolophus, as well as ankyosaurs like Tarchia and titanosaurs like Nemegtosaurus. Predatory threats to Barsboldia would have principally come from large tyrannosaurs such as Alioramus and Tarbosaurus.
Further Reading
- First lambeosaurine dinosaur from the Nemegt Formation, Upper Cretaceous, Mongolia. - Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 26(3-1):243-255. - T. Maryanska & H. Osm�lska - 1981. - A Reappraisal of Barsboldia sicinskii (Dinosauria: Hadrosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. - Journal of Paleontology 83 (3): 468–477. - Albert Prieto-M�rquez - 2011.
