Achillesaurus
| Achillesaurus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
assumed appearance of Achillesaurus |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous ( Santonium ) | ||||||||||||
| 86.3 to 83.6 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Achillesaurus | ||||||||||||
| Martinelli , Vera , 2007 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
|
Achillesaurus was a theropod dinosaur from the group of Alvarezsauridae , the fossil remains of which come from the Upper Cretaceous Argentina ( Río Negro ). This genus was Agustín Martinelli and Ezequiel Vera in 2007 with the only previous type ( type species ) achillesaurus manazzonei first described .
As with other Alvarez saurids, it was probably a bird-like, two-legged animal that stood out for its very short arms. Achillesaurus was a relatively large and basic (original) representative of the Alvarezsauridae, although the relationship to other genera of this group remains unclear.
Find and naming
So far only a partial skeleton is known (catalog number MACN-PV-RN 1116), which consists of a sacral vertebra, four caudal vertebrae, the upper end of the left thigh bone (femur), the lower end of the left shin bone (tibia) in an anatomical connection with the talus ( Astragalus), partial metatarsal bones and the left ilium (ilium). Stratigraphically , the fossils come from the Bajo de la Carpa formation (Upper Cretaceous, Santonium ), in which the bones of Alvarezsaurus calvoi , another Alvarez saurid, were discovered.
The name Achillesaurus is derived from Achilles , a hero of Greek mythology , and indicates the Achilles heel , the only place where Achilles is vulnerable. The researchers chose this name because diagnostic features were discovered in the heel region of the skeleton. The epithet manazzonei honors Prof. Rafael Manazzone, an amateur paleontologist who provided researchers with data on Patagonian fossil sites and supported several palaeontological excursions.
literature
- Agustín G. Martinelli, Ezequiel I. Vera: Achillesaurus manazzonei, a new alvarezsaurid theropod (Dinosauria) from the Late Cretaceous Bajo de la Carpa Formation, Río Negro Province, Argentina . In: Zootaxa . tape 1582 , 2007, ISSN 1175-5326 , p. 1–17 (English, abstract [PDF; 16 kB ]).
