Most underrated dinosaurs

[Sim]

Brachylophosaurus.  It's one of the best-understood dinosaurs, yet hardly anyone talks about it.

[thomasw100]

Brachylophosaurus.  It's one of the best-understood dinosaurs, yet hardly anyone talks about it.

Fully agree on that. A nice large hadrodsaur with excellent fossil remains. If Tlatolophus has deserved a model, so would Brachylophosaurus.

[Gwangi]

Scutellosaurus, I guess I understand why it's not popular but I like it a lot. Little armored dude with a ridiculously long tail. I want one for a pet but would settle for a toy of one. On that note, Liaoningosaurus too.

[Takama]

Brachylophosaurus.  It's one of the best-understood dinosaurs, yet hardly anyone talks about it.

Fully agree on that. A nice large hadrodsaur with excellent fossil remains. If Tlatolophus has deserved a model, so would Brachylophosaurus.

YES

Everyone latly wants a updated Maiasaura, but I often suggest this species instead as an alternative, since at least Maiasaura "has" many models on the aftermarket (if not up to modern standards)

[Sim]

Centrosaurus brinkmani.  It's unique among ceratopsians in having lots of little spikes emerge at the tops of its frill, making it look impressive!

Gargoyleosaurus.  It's a nodosaurid from the Jurassic period(!), specifically the famous Morrison Formation!  It also has a cool name!

[Concavenator]

If Tlatolophus has deserved a model, so would Brachylophosaurus.

Well, Tlatolophus has good remains. Not in the same league as Brachylophosaurus, of course, but its appearance is better known than other, more popular lambeosaurines like Tsintaosaurus and arguably Olorotitan too.

And when it comes to underrated dinosaurs, Tenontosaurus and Scutellosaurus came to my mind, but @Duna and @Gwangi beat me to it. Others that I can think of are:

- Asfaltovenator:  not another boring allosauroid. It's the oldest member of the group we currently know of (and allosauroids are an important and well-known group), and it helps that it has fairly good remains. In its description, Rauhut & Pol (2019) noted how this taxon presents a mosaic of different tetanuran traits, which is interesting because homoplasy is widespread among theropods (which have lead some people to believe stuff like Yutyrannus may be an allosauroid because of its physical resemblance to Allosaurus, despite Yutyrannus having excellent remains and unanimously being considered a tyrannosauroid).

- Beipiaosaurus: therizinosaurians generally have poor remains, with the clearest example being Therizinosaurus, which is the most famous member of the clade despite also being one of the most poorly-known (as per usual, no surprise it's the most popular considering it's the biggest  ). Beipiaosaurus, however, does have excellent remains. So much so, that it represents one of the few cases of a non-avian dinosaur's coloration being known (Li et al. 2014). Even blood cells were preserved in the holotype (Korneisel et al. 2018).

- Buitreraptor: unenlagiines are among the most neglected dromaeosaurids, and Buitreraptor is the member of the group with the best remains. It gets overshadowed by Austroraptor (despite not having as good remains as Buitreraptor, even if it still has decent remains), presumably because the latter is bigger. Not that Austroraptor receives a lot of attention either, though it seems to have gained more popularity in recent times. Prehistoric Planet probably helped.

- Centrosaurus and Chasmosaurus: as @Halichoeres once said, these tend to be forgotten in favor of Triceratops, Styracosaurus & Pachyrhinosaurus and the most recently described ceratopsids.

- Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus: among the basalmost members of Dinosauria. Both are known from good remains. About Eoraptor, interesting that a sauropodomorph has the -raptor suffix (yes, I know it was previously interpreted as a theropod, but its reclassification has made its name kind of funny). About Herrerasaurus, it strikes me as surprising that Baron et al. 2017 recover its family as the sister group of Sauropodomorpha!

- Halszkaraptor: seriously overlooked dinosaur considering how unique it is and how good its remains are. Also has interesting implications for theropod ecology considering its semiaquatic lifestyle. In this sense, I guess it's massively overshadowed by Spinosaurus, which may or may not be semiaquatic (please, don't @ me, don't want to engage in a debate about Spinosaurus). It also goes to show how morphologically diverse dromaeosaurids could be: from small gliding creatures like Microraptor, the elegant swan-like halszkaraptorines, the heron-like unenlagiines, to hulking beasts like Utahraptor.

- Ornithomimus edmontonicus: the first dinosaur with direct evidence of feathers (the feathers are literally preserved) being found outside of Asia (Zelenitsky et al. 2012). Because these animals obviously couldn't fly, it is believed their wings sported a display function. The discovery of feathered Ornithomimus specimens also showed that wings appeared earlier than previously believed.

I'm tempted to include in this section its whole family too. Particularly, I feel bad for Gallimimus and the little attention it receives considering it was featured in one of (or several? I don't remember) of the OG JP movies. OrnithomimIDs are very overlooked. More generally speaking, ornithomimosaurians too, with the only really famous member being Deinocheirus.

- Saurolophus: both species, though it seems the American one is even more neglected than the Asian. Both have very good remains, with even fossilised skin suggesting their color patterns (I mean, not their colorations, but the way they were arranged). Also names the Saurolophinae clade, which is interesting, because for most authors, it was previously called Hadrosaurinae (but Hadrosaurus is so fragmentary that its phylogenetic position in Hadrosauridae is uncertain). In addition, it's got to be one of the few cases of a dinosaur genus having more than 1 species unearthed in different continents, which is unusual because the tendency is to split them in different genera when possible. And honestly, both Saurolophus species to me look more different to each other than say, Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus.  I guess the Saurolophus genus is also overshadowed by Parasaurolophus (more specifically, P. walkeri), since the latter is named after it but not so many people know about (or remember) the former. It might be overshadowed by the more closely-related Edmontosaurus, too.

- Shunosaurus lii: one of the most well-understood sauropods, and also has the peculiarity of having a tail club. This sauropod is doubly overshadowed, both by larger sauropods (which are most of them since S. lii was small for a sauropod) and by Amargasaurus when it comes to smallish sauropods.

- Zhenyuanlong: the fossil alone is amazing. But the reason I'm including it is because it was the definite proof that large dromaeosaurids had wings too, confirming a prior hypothesis. Unsurprisingly, this has implications for our concept of dromaeosaurids, especially alluding to pop-culture. It's not enough to place some isolated feathers in dromaeosaurids to call them accurate. They were actual bird-like creatures, and birds don't simply have a bunch of feathers and that's it. PNSO, this, and Shunosaurus (hope the rumours are true), is the type of local taxa that would make for valuable additions to your portfolio (not Zhuchengtyrannus, the so-called "Sinopliosaurus", etc).

[Faelrin]

A couple of the ones you guys posted crossed my mind earlier (such as Brachylophosaurus, Buitreraptor, Eoraptor, Zhenyuanlong, etc), but I wasn't sure how underrated they are, so I omitted them.

Here's some more I was just thinking of:

-Ajnabia (a dwarf hadrosaur)
-Kulindadromeus (since I've been waiting years for figures of it)
-Lingwulong (an Asian dicraeosaurid)
-Sinosaurus (another early Jurassic theropod, similar to Dilophosaurus in appearance)
-Vulcanodon (an early sauropod)

I think Zalmoxes might fit on this list too, even if it got its due in Prehistoric Planet.

[Torvosaurus]

Centrosaurus brinkmani.  It's unique among ceratopsians in having lots of little spikes emerge at the tops of its frill, making it look impressive!

Gargoyleosaurus.  It's a nodosaurid from the Jurassic period(!), specifically the famous Morrison Formation!  It also has a cool name!

Gargoylesaurus. They found it maybe 100 miles from where I'm at. There's a great skeleton in the Museum of Nature and Science in Denver. With it is Mymoorapelta, another nodosaurid from the Morrison Formation, and Marshosaurus, a piatnitzkysaurid megalosaur.

Irritator/Angaturama, Oxalaia, and Genyodectes. It would be cool if more data was discovered for these animals.

Torvo

[GojiraGuy1954]

Xinjiangtitan. Very complete Mamenchisaur with an absurdly long neck and short legs.

[suspsy]

Xinjiangtitan. Very complete Mamenchisaur with an absurdly long neck and short legs.

This.

[suspsy]

Jurassic ankylosaurs Gargoyleosaurus and Mymoorapelta certainly deserve more attention. I don't think I've ever seen paleoart or a museum display of one of them being confronted by an Allosaurus or a Ceratosaurus. Nor can I think of any existing toys of either of them.

[Faelrin]

@GojiraGuy1954 TIL. Thanks for sharing that one. Very interesting looking.

[GojiraGuy1954]

Whatever this thing is (speculative reconstructions of Thyreosaurus, very recent 2024 animal)