Kazaklambia

Discovery and naming

A nearly complete hadrosaurid skeleton was found in 1961 at the Syuk-Syuk locality of the Dabrazinskaya Svita in southern Kazakhstan, 45 km north of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. This was the second hadrosaur discovery in that region after Jaxartosaurus, and the third from Kazakhstan following Aralosaurus in 1957. The specimen, PIN No. 2230, lacked only the snout, hands, left foot, and tail tip, making it the most complete dinosaur known from Kazakhstan and the entire Soviet Union.

The species name referred to the discovery providing convincing evidence for the Cretaceous age of the Dabrazinskaya Svita's dinosaur horizon, which some had considered Paleogene with reworked fossils. Rozhdestvensky inferred a Turonian to Santonian age for Kazakh hadrosaurs based on comparisons with better-constrained deposits; although the bed contained late Turonian mollusks, the species' similarity to other Procheneosaurus suggested a younger Santonian age.

Classification

Bell and Brink assigned Kazaklambia to the Lambeosaurinae in a basal position. Morphometrics and morphological data indicate a possible close relationship with the Asian basal lambeosaurines Amurosaurus and Tsintaosaurus, supporting an Asian origin for the Lambeosaurinae. A 2021 phylogenetic analysis by Ramírez-Velasco and colleagues recovered Kazaklambia as a primitive member of Lambeosaurini, though many relationships within Lambeosaurinae remained unresolved.

Did You Know?

• Kazaklambia has a prefrontal process of the postorbital with a thickened dome lateral to the frontal dome.
• The nasal is domed above and in front of the orbit.
• Its frontal length/width ratio is less than one.