Yechilacerta

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Yechilacerta: leaf-toothed lizard

Yechilacerta is an extinct lizard from the Late Cretaceous period in what is now China. It belongs to the polyglyphanodontian group and to the family Gilmoreteiidae. The only species known is Yechilacerta yingliangia.

The fossils come from the Hekou Formation near Ganzhou, Jiangxi province. It is known from two skulls and parts of a skeleton. The main holotype skull, YLSNHM01796, is nearly complete but misses the tip of the snout and was found at the Huadong Cheng Construction site. Another nearby site yielded a larger skull, along with parts of the skeleton: YLSNHM01791A (skull), YLSNHM01791B (anterior skeleton), and YLSNHM01791C (posterior skeleton). The skull and skeleton pieces are thought to belong to the same individual and are catalogued together as YLSNHM01791.

In 2023, Lida Xing, Kecheng Niu, and Susan E. Evans described this animal as a new genus and species. The name Yechilacerta means “leaf-toothed lizard,” and yingliangia honors the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, where the fossils are kept.

A notable feature of Yechilacerta is a complete lower temporal bar, a trait seen in only a few other lizards. In phylogenetic analyses, it was placed within Polyglyphanodontia, close to Tianyusaurus, another lizard with a complete lower temporal bar. A 2025 study describing Caninosaurus found similar results, placing Yechilacerta as the sister to the group formed by Caninosaurus and Tianyusaurus.

The fossils are housed at the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, with specimen numbers including YLSNHM01796, YLSNHM01791A, YLSNHM01791B, and YLSNHM01791C.