Dinosaur Genera List corrections #128

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

The December Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology arrived today with its usual 
collection of interesting dinosaur articles, one of which requires a 
correction to the Dinosaur Genera List:

Zhao Xijin, Cheng Zhengwu & Xu Xing, 1999. "The earliest ceratopsian from the 
Tuchengzi Formation of Liaoning, China," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19
(4): 681-691 [December 13, 1999].

This article formally describes the genus and species Chaoyangsaurus youngi, 
a primitive ceratopian from China that may be basal to both psittacosaurs and 
neoceratopians. The name of this interesting dinosaur, under various 
spellings, has been kicking around the literature as a nomen nudum for more 
than 16 years, and it is good to finally have a formally published 
description.

So change the entry from

Chaoyoungosaurus Zhao, 1983 [nomen nudum]

to

Chaoyangsaurus Zhao, Cheng & Xu, 1999

There is no change to the genera count, since a nomen nudum has been replaced 
by a scientific name.

In my table of Asiatic dinosaurs, the entry for this genus now reads in its 
entirety:

Chaoyangsaurus Zhao, Cheng & Xu, 1999
    = Chaoyangosaurus Zhao & Cheng, 1983 vide Dong, 1992 [sic]
    = Chaoyangsaurus Sereno, 1999 [nomen nudum]
    = Chaoyoungosaurus [Anonymous] 1981?82 [nomen nudum; transliterated from 
Japanese]
    = Chaoyoungosaurus Zhao, 1983 [nomen nudum]
    C. youngi Zhao, Cheng & Xu, 1999?
        = Chaoyoungosaurus liaosiensis Zhao, 1985?
        = Chaoyangosaurus liaosiensis Zhao & Cheng, 1983 vide Dong, 1992 [sic]
NOTE: The name of this genus was first published in Japanese in a dinosaur 
chart in an anonymous guidebook to a Chinese dinosaur exhibition in Japan in 
1981 or 1982. The spelling Chaoyoungosaurus from that article is a 
transliteration provided by M. Tanimoto (pers. comm.); coincidentally, this 
was also its first published Latin spelling, as a nomen nudum in Zhao, 1983. 
The type species name, Chaoyoungosaurus liaosiensis, was subsequently 
published, also as a nomen nudum, by Zhao in 1985. Dong (1992) asserted that 
this dinosaur had been described and named in 1983 by Zhao & Cheng, but the 
citation for this reference is missing from Dong's bibliography. Dong also 
emended the spelling of the genus to Chaoyangosaurus. P. Sereno (pers. comm.) 
noted that the 1983 paper by Zhao & Cheng with the spelling Chaoyangosaurus 
was almost certainly not properly published and that spelling is also a nomen 
nudum. Regardless of these earlier spellings, the generic name finally became 
Chaoyangsaurus, with type species named Chaoyangsaurus youngi, when the 
dinosaur was formally described by Zhao, Cheng & Xu in the December 13, 1999 
issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. This is the spelling 
previously used by Sereno in his June 25, 1999 article in Science on dinosaur 
phylogeny.