Lufengosaurus (Chinese: 祿豐龍 or 禄丰龙, meaning "Lufeng lizard") is a genus of massospondylid dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic period in what is now southwestern China.
However, most authors have regarded it as a junior synonym of L. huenei, with its specimens being said to simply represent larger individuals of the type species.
[2] This genus has subsequently been referred to Lufengosaurus on two separate occasions: once by Peter Galton in 1976 and once in a 2017 SVP presentation by Wang and colleagues.
[7] However, a reanalysis in 2005 by Paul Barrett and colleagues, performed on the skull of Lufengosaurus huenei established it firmly as a valid genus separate from both Massospondylus and Yunnanosaurus based on craniodental characteristics.
[8] The species has however remained undescribed and thus a nomen nudum, with neither the reported Tibetan specimen nor any other material being formally assigned to it after it was named.
In 2015, preserved collagen protein was found in a Lufengosaurus fossil by an international team led by Yao-Chang Lee of Taiwan's National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center.
[4] Lufengosaurus snout was deep and broad, and it had distinctive bony bumps just behind its large nostrils and on its cheeks.
Young originally assigned Lufengosaurus to the Plateosauridae of the suborder Prosauropoda, noting that it stood close to Plateosaurus fraasianus.
Barret, Upchurch and Wang recovered Lufengosaurus as being the sister taxon to Gyposaurus sinensis in their 2005 cladistic analysis.
[17] While originally considered to be a Triassic locality, nowadays the Lufeng Formation is dated to the Lower Jurassic instead (Hettangian-Sinemurian), implying that Lufengosaurus existed in a more recent timeframe than previously thought.