Agathaumas
| Agathaumas | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sacrum and vertebrae of Agathaumas sylvestris |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) | ||||||||||||
| 72 to 66 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Agathaumas | ||||||||||||
| Cope , 1872 |
Agathaumas is a little known species of bird Beck dinosaurs (ornithopoda) from the group of Ceratopsidae .
features
From Agathaumas only have so far fossil remains of the sacrum and pelvis found. From these finds it can be seen that it belongs to the Ceratopsidae, but a more precise classification is not possible, which is why the find is listed as nomen dubium .
Discovery and naming
The find is remarkable because it was the first finding of a Ceratopsia dinosaur . The fossils were discovered in the Lance Formation in Sweetwater County , Wyoming , and first described by Edward Drinker Cope in 1872 . The generic name is derived from the Greek words agan (= "much") and thauma (= "miracle"). The type species is A. sylvestris . At that time, the sparse finds did not allow any more precise conclusions to be drawn about the appearance of the animals; it was only around 15 years later that the appearance of the Ceratopsidae could be guessed at with the finds of Triceratops . Triceratops is likely to be closely related to Agathaumas , according to Cope these genera are even synonymous, which, however, cannot be proven.
The finds are dated to the late Upper Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian ) to an age of 72 to 66 million years.
Agathaumas in culture
The painter Charles R. Knight created a picture of Agathaumas in 1897 , in which the trunk of Triceratops , the nasal horn of a Centrosaurinae and the back armor of an ankylosaur crept into it. Similarly figure appears Agathaumas in the 1925 published film The Lost World ( The Lost World ).
literature
- Peter Dodson , Catherine A. Forster, Scott D. Sampson: Ceratopsidae. In: David B. Weishampel , Peter Dodson, Halszka Osmólska (eds.): The Dinosauria . 2nd edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 2004, ISBN 0-520-24209-2 , pp. 494-513.