Coelurosauravus
| Coelurosauravus | ||||||||||||
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Live reconstruction of Coelurosauravus in gliding flight |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Perm | ||||||||||||
| 258 to 251 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Coelurosauravus | ||||||||||||
| Piveteau , 1926 | ||||||||||||
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Coelurosauravus is a genus of primitive diapsids whose fossils were found in Upper Permian sedimentary rocks in Madagascar , Germany and England .
Features and way of life
Similar to Kuehneosaurus , Icarosaurus , Sharovipteryx , the more recently known Mecistotrachelos and the more recent kites , Coelurosauravus had flying membranes that enabled it to glide . In contrast to all the other gliding reptiles, the flight membranes in Coelurosauravus were not spanned by bones that were already present in its non-gliding ancestors ( limbs or elongated ribs ). Instead, the 28 pairs of curved bony rods attached to the side of the rib cage are entirely new structures. These bone rods were formed in the skin (dermal). Such skin bones occur in numerous reptiles, u. a. Crocodiles, before. There they are called osteoderms and are mostly part of a type of armor.
Specimens, taxonomic history and systematics
Since Jean Piveteau first described Coelurosauravus elivensis from the freshwater sediments of the Madagascan Sakamena Formation in 1926, over twenty fossil specimens have been assigned to the taxon Coelurosauravus . A skeleton discovered in copper slate near Eisleben , which Otto Jaekel acquired for the collection of the University of Greifswald in 1913 , was described by Johannes Weigelt in 1930 as Paleochamaeleo jaekeli . Although the specimen Jaekel was offered at the time as a "pterosaur", Weigelt interpreted the bone rods of the gliding wings as coincidentally embedded with the reptile skeleton fin rays of a coelacanth . Since the genus name Paleochamaeleo was already assigned to a fossil agam genus , it was later renamed Weigeltisaurus jaekeli . In 1987, all finds of Weigeltisaurus and Coelurosauravus as well as a specimen from the copper slate, also described by Weigelt in 1930 as Gracilisaurus ottoi , were re-evaluated and combined in the genus Coelurosauravus with the type species Coelurosauravus elivensis . The species Daedalosaurus madagascariensis , described in Madagascar in 1978, was synonymous with C. elivensis as early as 1982 .
In a phylogenetic analysis, Coelurosauravus was assigned together with Longisquama and the Drepanosauriden to the group Avicephala , which is outside the Neodiapsida . This means that Coelurosauravus is more distantly related to scale reptiles , crocodiles and birds .
Trivia
The presumed hunting behavior of the Coelurosauravus was reconstructed in 2016 in the French documentary Les Mondes Perdus (German: wiped out) by the arte television channel . According to the filmmakers, Coelurosauravus was partly responsible for the extinction of the giant dragonflies of the Meganeuridae family in the Permian. The animal is also shown in the television series Primeval - Return of the Primeval Monsters .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nicholas C. Fraser, Paul E. Olsen, Alton C. Dooley Jr., Timothy R. Ryan: A new gliding tetrapod (Diapsida:? Archosauromorpha) from the Upper Triassic (Carnian) of Virginia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 27, No. 2, 2007, pp. 261-265, doi : 10.1671 / 0272-4634 (2007) 27 [261: ANGTDA] 2.0.CO; 2
- ↑ Eberhard Frey, Hans-Dieter Sues, Wolfgang Munk: Gliding Mechanism in the Late Permian Reptile Coelurosauravus. Science. Vol. 275, 1997, pp. 1450-1452, doi : 10.1126 / science.275.5305.1450
- ^ Günther Schaumberg, David M. Unwin, Silvio Brandt: New information on the Late Permian gliding reptile Coelurosauravus. Paleontological Journal. Vol. 81, No. 2, 2007, pp. 160-173, doi : 10.1007 / BF02988390
- ^ A b Johannes Weigelt: Palaeochamaeleo jaekeli nov. gen. nov. sp., a new Rhynchocephale from the Mansfeld copper schist. Leopoldina. Reports of the Imperial Leopoldine German Academy of Natural Scientists in Halle (second series). Vol. 6 (Festschrift for Johannes Walther), 1930, pp. 625–642
- ^ Susan E. Evans, Hartmut Haubold: A review of the Upper Permian genera Coelurosauravus , Weigeltisaurus and Gracilisaurus (Reptilia: Diapsida). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. 90, No. 3, 1987, pp. 275-303, doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.1987.tb01356.x
- ^ Robert L. Carroll: Permo-Triassic “lizards” from the Karoo System. Part II. A gliding reptile from the Upper Permian of Madagascar. Palaeontologia Africana. Vol. 21, 1978, pp. 143-159
- ^ Susan E. Evans: The gliding reptiles of the Upper Permian. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. 76, No. 2, 1982, pp. 97-123, doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.1982.tb01496.x
- ↑ Phil Senter: Phylogeny of the Drepanosauridae (Reptilia: Diapsida). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Vol. 2, No. 3, 2004, pp. 257-268, doi : 10.1017 / S1477201904001427
