Re: T[s]agantegia, Shanxia/Tianzhenosaurus questions

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

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Datum: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 16:49:14 +0800
Von: Luis Perez <lmpm1234@verizonmail.com>

> Tsaagan is a good name

Actually it's _tsagaan_, as pioneering use of Google as a dictionary proves. 
"tsagaan" (i. e. ÑÐÐÐÐÐ) gives no less than 313,000 Google hits, of which 
at least the first 40 are actually in Mongolian (except for 4 in Russian and 1 
in Japanese). The inverse spelling only gives 115, of which the first 40 are 
all in Russian, except for 1 in Kazakh, 1 in Mongolian, and 1 in Ukrainian. 
Looks like the one Mongolian occurrence is a typo, and the others are either 
typos or false memory by people who don't distinguish long and short vowels in 
their languages.

<whine>

Great. Now we have another eternal embarrassment about Mongolian vowel length 
(the first being *Tyrannosaurus bataar* which should be _baatar_).

> What does "Shanxia" mean?

Shanxi is the Chinese province "Mountain West", situated between Shandong 
"Mountain East" and... Shanxi "Decidely Unpopular Region West". The first 
syllable of the latter is not pronounced the same way (the tone differs), and 
of course the character is not the same either.

This one is it: http://www.zhongwen.com/d/164/x115.htm
This is the neighboring province to the west: 
http://www.zhongwen.com/d/176/x162.htm

> Also, have any shamosaurine post cranial elements been found?

There is a tradition of keeping all ankylosaur postcrania secret.

That said, it's entirely possible that only skulls are known.

> because as I hear, all of the shamosaurines are based on skulls,
> like Gobisaurus, Shamosaurus, Tsagantegia and such,

Since when is *Tsagantegia* a shamosaurine? ~:-|
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