Tianyulong
| Tianyulong Temporal range: Late Jurassic,
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| Specimen IVPP V17090, muzzle, hand, feet and tail framed in red | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | †Ornithischia |
| Family: | †Heterodontosauridae |
| Genus: | †Tianyulong Zheng et al., 2009 |
| Species: | †T. confuciusi
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| Binomial name | |
| †Tianyulong confuciusi Zheng et al., 2009
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Tianyulong (Chinese: 天宇龍; Pinyin: tiānyǔlóng; named for the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature where the holotype fossil is housed) was a genus of heterodontosaurid ornithischian dinosaur. The only species was T. confuciusi, whose remains were discovered in Jianchang County, Western Liaoning Province, China.[1]
Discovery
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The fossil was initially reported as being from the Early Cretaceous Jehol group. The fossil was collected at a locality transliterated as Linglengta or Linglongta. Lu et al., 2010, reported that these beds were actually part of the Tiaojishan Formation, dating from the late Jurassic period at least 158.5 million years ago.[2]
Tianyulong has a row of long, filamentous integumentary structures on the back, tail and neck of the specimen. Their structure differs so much from the filaments (proto-feathers) found on some Coelurosaurs that most paleontologists agree that they are not homologous with feathers.
The holotype consists of an incomplete skeleton preserving a partial skull and mandible, partial presacral vertebrae, proximal–middle caudal vertebrae, nearly complete right scapula, both humeri, the proximal end of the left ulna, partial pubes, both ischia, both femora, the right tibia and fibula and pes, as well as remains of long, singular and unbranched filamentous integumentary structures. The holotype is from a subadult individual that probably measured 70 cm in length based on the proportions of the related South African species Heterodontosaurus tucki.
Classification
Tianyulong is classified as a heterodontosaurid, a group of small ornithischian dinosaur characterized by a slender body, long tail and a pair of enlarged canine-like tusks. They were herbivorous or possibly omnivorous. Until the discovery of Tianyulong, known members of the group were restricted to the Early Jurassic of South Africa, with one genus (Fruitadens) from the Late Jurassic of the USA, and possibly one additional genus (Echinodon) from the Early Cretaceous of England.
The cladogram below follows the analysis by Butler et al., 2011:[3]
| Heterodontosauridae |
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Paleobiology
The filamentous integumentary structures are preserved on three areas of the fossil: in one patch just below the neck, another one on the back, and the largest one above the tail. The hollow filaments are parallel to each other and are singular with no evidence of branching. They also appear to be relatively rigid, causing many paleontologists to agree that they are related to the integumentary structures found on the tail of Psittacosaurus[4]. The estimated length of the integumentary structures on the tail is about 60 mm which is seven times the height of a caudal vertebra. Their length and hollow nature argue against of them being subdermal structures such as collagen fibers.
Such dermal structures have previously been reported only in derived theropods and ornithischians, and their discovery in Tianyulong extends the existence of such structures further down in the phylogenetic tree. However, the homology between the ornithischian filaments and theropod proto-feathers is unlikely. If the homology is supported, the consequence is that the common ancestor of both saurischians and ornithischians were covered by feather-like structures, and that groups for which skin impression are known such as the sauropods were only secondarily featherless. If the homology is not supported, it would indicate that these filamentous dermal structures evolved independently in saurischians and ornithischians, as well as in other archosaurs such as the pterosaurs, this is currently the most excepted theory.
References
- ^ Zheng, Xiao-Ting; You, Hai-Lu; Xu, Xing; Dong, Zhi-Ming (19 March 2009). "An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary structures". Nature. 458 (7236): 333–336. doi:10.1038/nature07856. PMID 19295609.
- ^ Liu Y.-Q. Kuang H.-W., Jiang X.-J., Peng N., Xu H. & Sun H.-Y. (2012). "Timing of the earliest known feathered dinosaurs and transitional pterosaurs older than the Jehol Biota." Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (advance online publication).
- ^ Richard J. Butler, Jin Liyong, Chen Jun, Pascal Godefroit (2011). "The postcranial osteology and phylogenetic position of the small ornithischian dinosaur Changchunsaurus parvus from the Quantou Formation (Cretaceous: Aptian–Cenomanian) of Jilin Province, north-eastern China". Palaeontology. 54 (3): 667–683. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01046.x.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Mayr, Gerald; Peters, D. Stephan; Plodowski, Gerhard; Vogel, Olaf (August 2002). "Bristle-like integumentary structures at the tail of the horned dinosaur Psittacosaurus". Naturwissenschaften. 89 (8). Heidelberg: Springer Berlin: 361–365. doi:10.1007/s00114-002-0339-6. PMID 12435037.
External links
- Ed Yong (March 18, 2009). "Tianyulong - a fuzzy dinosaur that makes the origin of feathers fuzzier".