Jobaria
| Jobaria | ||||||||||||
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Jobaria tiguidensis , skeleton in the Australian Museum in Sydney . |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Aalen to Tithonian (Middle to Upper Jurassic) | ||||||||||||
| 175.6 to 145.5 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Jobaria | ||||||||||||
| Sereno et al. , 1999 | ||||||||||||
Jobaria is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs from the Middle and Upper Jurassic of the Sahara , North Africa . The only species described is Jobaria tiguidensis .
The fossil remains of the genus were found in the Tiouraren Formation near Agadez and the Farak Formation near Tahoua in Niger, Africa. A German team from the Natural History Museum in Braunschweig found another skeleton in the Sahara in 2007.
etymology
The name Jobaria tiguidensis is derived from “Jobar”, a mystical being in the legends of the native Tuareg nomads , and the Tiguidi cliff near the site.
description
The description of Jobaria is based on some partially and anatomically preserved skeletons and well preserved skulls. Overall, over 95 percent of the bones are fossilized.
The skull is smaller and lighter than that of Camarasaurus in relation to body size . The muzzle was short. There are 20 wide teeth each in the upper and lower jaw, each with a different number of denticles on their spade-shaped crowns. The neck was relatively short and supported by only twelve cervical vertebrae. The neural processes of the vertebrae were simple and undivided. The proportions of the limbs are primitive: the front legs are not elongated compared to the hind legs (as e.g. in the Brachiosaurus ) and the hand bones are also not elongated compared to the front leg (as is the case with the Camarasaurus or other Macronaria). Jobaria was about 18 to 21 meters long.
Systematics
The first descriptor, Paul Sereno, saw in the genus the sister group of the Neosauropoda . Today Jobaria is placed together with the closely related genera Atlassaurus and Bellusaurus in a monophyletic clade at the base of Macronaria .
The following cladogram illustrates the systematic position of Jobaria :
| Sauropoda |
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literature
- 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.
- Paul C. Sereno , Allison L. Beck, Didier B. Dutheil, Hans CE Larsson, Gabrielle H. Lyon, Bourahima Moussa, Rudyard W. Sadleir, Christian A. Sidor, David J. Varricchio, Gregory P. Wilson, Jeffrey A. Wilson: Cretaceous Sauropods from the Sahara and the Uneven Rate of Skeletal Evolution Among Dinosaurs. In: Science . Vol. 286, No. 5443, 1999, pp. 1342-1347, doi : 10.1126 / science.286.5443.1342 , digitized version (PDF; 223.61 kB) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Paleobiology Database: Jobaria (age range and collections)
- ↑ Saurian Cemetery. ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2010 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: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010.
