Haplocanthosaurus
| Haplocanthosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Skeletal reconstruction of Haplocanthosaurus delfsi |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Jurassic (late Kimmeridgian to Tithonian ) | ||||||||||||
| 154.7 to 145 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Haplocanthosaurus | ||||||||||||
| ( Hatcher , 1903) | ||||||||||||
| species | ||||||||||||
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Haplocanthosaurus ("spiny lizard") is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of North America. The type species is H. priscus (synonym: H. utterbacki ). Haplocanthosaurus is one of the most pristine sauropods found in North America.
description
Like all sauropods, Haplocanthosaurus was a four-legged herbivore. H. priscus reached a maximum length of up to 13 meters and an estimated weight of about 5 tons. At up to 21.5 meters, H. delfsi was 35 to 50 percent longer and could have weighed around 25 tons. The skeletal anatomy is primitive, this is especially true of the vertebral bones , the spinous processes of which are massive, so do not branch out, as is the case with many other sauropods. The scientific name of the genus refers to this characteristic. Haplocanthosaurus agrees with Cetiosaurus in many features . It had a very long neck made up of 14 vertebrae.
Discovery story
In 1901 the well-preserved partial skeletons of two individuals were discovered near Canyon City in the US state of Colorado , but, as is very common with sauropods, they lack the skull and thus valuable diagnostic information. John Bell Hatcher chose the larger of the two specimens as the holotype for his first scientific description published in 1903 and named the new genus and species from the late Kimmeridgium Haplocanthus priscus . But since this name had already been given to a genus of fossil fish, it could not be retained.
In the same region, but at a higher stratigraphic level (middle tithonium ), an excavation team on behalf of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History found a third, less complete specimen in 1954, which JS McIntosh and ME Williams only recognized as a separate species H. delfsi in 1988 has been. The epithet of the species name refers to the leader of the group, the student Edwin R. Delfs. All skeletons discovered so far come from the Morrison Formation, known for its wealth of vertebrate fossils .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Time of Haplocanthosaurus .
- ↑ a b Don Lessem , Donald F. Glut : The Dinosaur Society's Dinosaur Encyclopedia. Random House, New York NY et al. 1993, ISBN 0-679-41770-2 , p. 208.
- ↑ a b c d Paleos.com
- ↑ Haplocanthosaurus. ( Memento of March 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: The Dinosaur Encyclopaedia. Version 4.0, 1999.
- ↑ John B. Hatcher : A new sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic of Colorado. In: Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Vol. 16, 1903, ISSN 0006-324X , pp. 1-2, digitized . Quoted from The Paleobiology Database , as of May 11, 2004.
- ↑ John S. Mcintosh, Michael E. Williams: A new species of sauropod dinosaur, Haplocanthosaurus delfsi sp. nov., from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Fm. of Colorado. In: Kirtlandia. Vol. 43, 1988, ISSN 0075-6245 , pp. 3-26. Quoted from The Paleobiology Database , as of July 6, 2005.
- ↑ Dan Chabek: Dinosaur discovery managed to keep museum Happy ( Memento of the original from October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Lakewood Sun Post , August 18, 1994.
