Aviatyrannis
| Aviatyrannis | ||||||||||||
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The known fossil remains of Aviatyrannis (gray) |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Jurassic ( Kimmeridgian ) | ||||||||||||
| 157.3 to 152.1 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Aviatyrannis | ||||||||||||
| Rauhut , 2003 | ||||||||||||
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Aviatyrannis is a genus of European theropod dinosaurs (Theropoda) that belongs to the Tyrannosauroidea . He lived in the Upper Jurassic ( Kimmeridgium ) of Portugal . So far only the type species Aviatyrannis jurassica has been described. It was a small, bipedal carnivore.
Aviatyrannis is known only from teeth and parts of the basin that were found in the Alobaca Formation, the rocks of which are cut by the disused and now flooded Guimarota coal mine . Its fragmentary remains nevertheless clearly show that Aviatyrannis belongs to the Tyrannosauroidea. Together with Stokesosaurus from the North American Morrison Formation, the genus is one of the oldest known tyrannosauroids, only Guanlong from China was a little older. The best-known representative of this group is certainly Tyrannosaurus rex , which lived much later, at the exit of the Upper Cretaceous , and was many times larger.
The ilium , a partial bone of the pelvis, was only 90 millimeters long. Together with the few other Jurassic finds of this group, Aviatyrannis shows that the early tyrannosaurs were still small animals and that their Cretaceous relatives only reached a huge body size.
Aviatyrannis jurassica was scientifically described in 2003 by the German paleontologist Oliver Rauhut . The name means "the Jurassic grandmother of the tyrant" in allusion to the relationship with Tyrannosaurus .
literature
- Oliver W. M. Rauhut : A tyrannosauroid dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal. In: Palaeontology. Vol. 46, No. 5, 2003, ISSN 0031-0239 , pp. 903-910, doi : 10.1111 / 1475-4983.00325 , digitized version (PDF; 394.91 kB) ( Memento from November 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ).
