Brachiosaurus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brachiosaurus
Live reconstruction of Brachiosaurus altithorax

Live reconstruction of Brachiosaurus altithorax

Temporal occurrence
Upper Jurassic ( Kimmeridgian to Tithonian )
157.3 to 145 million years
Locations
Systematics
Dinosaur (dinosauria)
Lizard dinosaur (Saurischia)
Sauropodomorpha
Sauropods (Sauropoda)
Brachiosauridae
Brachiosaurus
Scientific name
Brachiosaurus
Riggs , 1903
Art
  • Brachiosaurus altithorax
E. Riggs's assistant next to a humerus from Brachiosaurus altithorax

Brachiosaurus ("arm lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of North America. Brachiosaurus is one of the largest land animals in the history of the earth . With other genera, it forms the taxon Brachiosauridae due to common anatomical features such as the long front legs and the high-lying nostrils.

description

E. Riggs and HW Menke working on the bones of Brachiosaurus altithorax

Brachiosaurus was an average herbivore 23 meters long and 13 meters high. The maximum length is assumed to be 25 to 27 meters. The shoulders were 6.4 meters high. Current weight estimates of Brachiosaurus altithorax are 23 (biologists in the Royal Society's Biology Letters , 2012), 28, 35, and 44 tons.

Brachiosaurus had a domed head with a wide, flat snout. The skull was very small compared to its height. There were peg-like teeth on the jaw . The neck was exceptionally long (8–9 m). It consisted of 14 cervical vertebrae , no more than other sauropods, but each vertebra was about three times as long as a dorsal vertebra . It was also unusual that the front legs were longer than the rear legs.

The finds

The fossil evidence of this genus of dinosaur comes from North America and possibly from Algeria and Portugal .

The assignment of the Algerian finds to B. nougaredi is questionable. According to Upchurch, Barret and Dodson, this material does not belong to the genus Brachiosaurus , but to an indefinite Brachiosaurid.

According to Upchurch, Barrett and Dodson, the finds from Portugal, B. atalaiensis , do not belong to the genus Brachiosaurus either , and Antunes and Mateus placed them in their own genus Lusotitan .

Earlier, the finds from the Tendaguru formation of Tanzania described by Werner Janensch were placed as species B. brancai in the genus Brachiosaurus . Above all, the skeleton displayed in the Berlin Museum of Natural History is world-famous . The art epithet brancai honors the director of the museum at the time, Wilhelm von Branca , who made it possible to finance the expedition. However, a detailed study by Michael Taylor showed a large number of serious differences between Brachiosaurus and the African material, so that this was placed in its own genus Giraffatitan , which Paul established in 1988.

B. fraasi is a more recent synonym of B. brancai , which Janensch recognized as early as 1929.

"Ultrasauros"

In the Morrison Formation , individual bones were found from a dinosaur that was bigger than Brachiosaurus but very similar to it. It was given the name Ultrasaurus (this was later changed to Ultrasauros , since the original name was already taken), its length was estimated to be more than 30 m, its weight to over 100 tons. In 1996, however, it turned out that the find was only a “bone mixture” of Brachiosaurus and Supersaurus . Ultrasauros is therefore considered a nomen dubium .

further reading

  • Elmer S. Riggs : Brachiosaurus altithorax, the largest known dinosaur. In: American Journal of Science. Vol. 165 = Series 4, Vol. 15, No. 88, Article 30, 1903, ISSN  0002-9599 , pp. 299-306, digitized .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Michael P. Taylor: A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 29, No. 3, 2009, ISSN  0272-4634 , pp. 787-806, doi : 10.1671 / 039.029.0309 , (PDF; 2.5 MB).
  2. ↑ a b P. Martin Sander , Andreas Christian, Marcus Clauss, Regina Fechner, Carole T. Gee, Eva-Maria Griebeler, Hanns-Christian Gunga , Jürgen Hummel, Heinrich Mallison, Steven F. Perry, Holger Preuschoft, Oliver WM Rauhut , Kristian Remes, Thomas Tütken, Oliver Wings, Ulrich Witzel: Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism. In: Biological Reviews. Vol. 86, No. 1, 2011, ISSN  0006-3231 , pp. 117–155, doi : 10.1111 / j.1469-185X.2010.00137.x , digital version (PDF; 1.25 MB) .
  3. ^ Frank Seebacher: A new method to calculate allometric length-mass relationships of dinosaurs. In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 21, No. 1, 2001, pp. 51-60, doi : 10.1671 / 0272-4634 (2001) 021 [0051: ANMTCA] 2.0.CO; 2 .
  4. ↑ a b Gregory S. Paul : The brachiosaur giants of the Morrison and Tendaguru with a description of a new subgenus, Giraffatitan, and a comparison of the world's largest dinosaurs. In: Hunteria. Vol. 2, No. 5, 1988, ZDB -ID 1251702-1 , pp. 1-14.
  5. ↑ JR Foster Foster, Jurassic West. The dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation and their world . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2007.
  6. ^ Albert F. de Lapparent: Les dinosauriens du "continental intercalaire" du Sahara central (= Mémoires de la Société Géologique de France. Vol. 88A = NS 39, ISSN  0369-2027 ). Société Géologique de France, Paris 1960.
  7. ^ A b Paul Upchurch , Paul M. Barrett , Peter Dodson : Sauropoda. 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. 259-324.
  8. ^ Abbey Albert F. de Lapparent, Georges Zbyszewski: Les Dinosauriens du Portugal (= Memórias dos Serviços Geológicos de Portugal. NS No. 2, ISSN  0037-2730 ). Serviços Geológicos de Portugal, Lisbonne 1957, digital version (PDF; 136.27 kB) .
  9. ^ Miguel Telles Antunes, Octávio Mateus: Dinosaurs of Portugal. In: Comptes Rendus Palevol. Vol. 2, No. 1, 2003, ISSN  1631-0683 , pp. 77-95, doi : 10.1016 / S1631-0683 (03) 00003-4 .
  10. ↑ a b Werner Janensch : Overview of the vertebrate fauna of the Tendaguru layers, together with a brief characterization of the newly listed sauropod species. In: Archives for Biontology. Vol. 3, 1914, ZDB -ID 500155-9 , pp. 81-110.
  11. ↑ a b Werner Janensch: Material and shape content of the sauropods in the yield of the Tendaguru expedition. In: Scientific results of the Tendaguru expedition 1909–1912. NF Series 1, Part 2, Lfg. 1 = Palaeontographica. Supplement. 7, 1, 2, 1, 1929, ISSN  0085-4611 , pp. 1-34.

Web links

Commons : Brachiosaurus  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Brachiosaurus  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations