Kunbarrasaurus (meaning "shield lizard") is an extinct genus of small ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Cretaceous of Australia.

[2] In 2015, Lucy G. Leahey, Ralph E. Molnar, Kenneth Carpenter, Lawrence M. Witmer and Steven W. Salisbury named and described the type species Kunbarrasaurus ieversi.

The specific name ieversi honours Mr Ian Ivers, the property manager who originally found the fossil.

[3] The holotype, QM F1801, was found in a layer of the Allaru Formation, marine sediments dating from the late Albian, or possibly the early Cenomanian.

[citation needed] In 2022, a specimen collected in 2005 by Benjamin P. Kear from Warra Station near Boulia, Queensland, SAMA P40536 was described and referred to Kunbarrasaurus.

However, the describing authors refrained from referring it to K. leversi because it did not share any unique features with the type specimen.

It was found in a layer belonging to the Toolebuc Formation, which directly underlies the Allaru Mudstone and dates to the middle-upper Albian.

This opening, which is completely located in the nasal bone, is large compared to the maxillary part of the snout and fully accessible from above and the side.

[2] Kunbarrasaurus had bony protrusions, also known as body armour, in the skin on its head, back, abdomen, legs and along the tail.

[2] In 2021, Sergio Soto-Acuña et al. found Kunbarrasaurus to belong to a distinctive basal lineage of Southern Hemisphere ankylosaurs, the Parankylosauria.

Their phylogenetic analyses placed it as the sister taxon to the clade formed by the Late Cretaceous Stegouros and Antarctopelta.

Unlike most herbivorous dinosaurs, there is direct evidence of the diet of Kunbarrasaurus: gut contents are known from the well-preserved nearly complete holotype specimen, found in the abdominal cavity in front of the left ilium.

Comparisons with gut contents and scat from other modern herbivores like lizards, emus, and geese indicate that this Kunbarrasaurus individual had a more sophisticated process for cutting up plant material.