page_title: Pinacosaurus
section_title: Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Pinacosaurus / Classification
caption_attribution_description: English: Pinacosaurus mephistocephalus in the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences.
context_page_description: Pinacosaurus is a genus of ankylosaurid thyreophoran dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous, mainly in Mongolia and China.
  The first remains of the genus were found in 1923, and the type species Pinacosaurus grangeri was named in 1933. Pinacosaurus mephistocephalus named in 1999, is a second possibly valid species differing from the type species in details of the skull armour. Of Pinacosaurus grangeri many skeletons have been found, more than of any other ankylosaur. These predominantly consist of juveniles that perhaps lived in herds roaming the desert landscape of their habitat.
  Pinacosaurus was a medium-sized ankylosaurine, about five metres long and weighed up to two tonnes. Its body was flat and low-slung but not as heavily built as in some other members of the Ankylosaurinae. The head was protected by bone tiles, hence its name. Each nostril was formed as a large depression pierced by between three and five smaller holes, the purpose of which is uncertain. A smooth beak bit off low-growing plants that were sliced by rows of small teeth and then swallowed to be processed by the enormous hind gut.
context_section_description: Originally placed in the Nodosauridae by Gilmore, Pinacosaurus is now considered to be an ankylosaurid and a likely member of the Ankylosaurinae. As indicated by Thompson et al. 2012, the difference in the relative position of the two Pinacosaurus species between the respective analyses, is influenced by the fact that the best preserved P. grangeri skulls are from juveniles, while the holotype of P. mephistocephalus is an adult with a skull that is longer than it is wide, which might cause a more basal position of the latter.
  The following cladogram is based on the 2015 phylogenetic analysis of the Ankylosaurinae conducted by Arbour and Currie:
caption: P. mephistocephalus skull
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