Saichangurvel

iguanian lizards from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is a member of a clade called Gobiguania, an exclusively Late Cretaceous group of iguanian lizards that was likely endemic to the Gobi Desert. The type species, Saichangurvel davidsoni, was named by paleontologists Jack Conrad and Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in 2007. It is known from a single nearly complete and fully articulated skeleton called IGM 3/858, which was found eroding from a block of sandstone during a thunderstorm at a fossil locality called Ukhaa Tolgod.^[1] IGM 3/858 comes from the Djadochta Formation, which is between 75 and 71 million years in age.^[2] Just as it is today, the Gobi was a desert during the Cretaceous. IGM 3/858 may have died in a collapsing sand dune, the rapid burial preserving its skeleton in pristine condition.^[1]