Garudimimus
| Garudimimus | ||||||||||||
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Speculative life reconstruction of Garudimimus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous ( Coniacium to Santonium ) | ||||||||||||
| 89.7 to 83.6 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Garudimimus | ||||||||||||
| Barsbold , 1981 |
Garudimimus is a genus of dinosaurs from the group of ornithomimosauria within the Theropoda .
features
Garudimimus had the typical build of the ornithomimosauria. It was a slender, lightly built dinosaur that only moved biped . The hind limbs were significantly longer than the forelimbs, the arms and hands were large but delicately built compared to those of other Theropoda. The lightly built head sat on a long neck. The muzzle was elongated and conspicuously rounded, it had a horned beak, and there were no teeth. The eyes were relatively large and were on the sides of the head. In the structure of the hind legs, Garudimimus still shows some primitive features compared to the more highly developed Ornithomimidae : the first toe was still present, and the arctometatarsal position of the metatarsal bones was not yet fully developed; H. the middle of the three metatarsals tapered only moderately towards the top. The metatarsus was also relatively short. Garudimimus reached a length of around 4 meters.
His body was geared towards running fast. What this dinosaur ate with its toothless beak is not known.
Discovery and naming
The fossil remains of Garudimimus were discovered in the Ömnö-Gobi-Aimag region in Mongolia and first described in 1981 . The name means "imitator of Garuda ", a winged animal in Indian mythology and is in the tradition that ornithomimosauria are often referred to as "imitators" (- mimus ) of birds or winged beings. The type and only known species is Garudimimus brevipes . The finds are dated to the early Upper Cretaceous , the information varies between the Coniacian and the Santonian (about 89 to 83 million years ago).
Systematics
Cladistic studies place Garudimimus as more highly developed than Pelecanimimus , Shenzhousaurus or Harpymimus (all of which, for example, all still had teeth), but more basic than the Ornithomimidae , whose sister taxon it is considered to be. Sometimes the genus is classified in its own monotypic family Garudimimidae.
literature
- Peter J. Makovicky , Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Philip J. Currie : Ornithomimosauria. 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. 137-150.
Individual evidence
- ^ Dougal Dixon : The World Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures. Lorenz, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7548-1730-7 , p. 306.