Kentrosaurus
| Kentrosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Skeleton reconstruction in the Berlin Museum of Natural History |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Jurassic (late Kimmeridgian ) | ||||||||||||
| 154.7 to 152.1 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Kentrosaurus | ||||||||||||
| Hennig , 1915 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
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Kentrosaurus is a genus of pelvic dinosaurs from the stegosauria group . The genus was characterized by its pointed dorsal spines and lived in the Upper Jurassic (late Kimmeridgian ) in what is now Africa.
features
With an estimated length of 5 meters, Kentrosaurus was a rather small stegosaur. Like all representatives of this group, it was characterized by the double row of bony structures (osteoderms) that extended along the back and the tail. On the neck and front half of the back he wore six pairs of bone plates that were relatively small and pointed. This was followed by eight pairs of large, pointed spikes on the back of the back and tail. The rearmost pair of spines was attached almost horizontally. In addition, Kentrosaurus had two other long spines. For a long time it was assumed that these were attached to the pelvis , but comparisons with other stegosaurs make a position on the shoulder more likely. The plates and spikes are likely to have served either for display during courtship or for defense against enemies (or both tasks in common).
As with most stegosaurs, the front legs were short and strong, the rear legs long and columnar. In contrast to the closely related Stegosaurus , Kentrosaurus lacked the long vertebral processes .
There are no complete skulls ; however, like most other stegosaurs , Kentrosaurus probably had a flat, elongated snout. The teeth were small and roughly triangular in shape, suggesting a plant-based diet, like all stegosaurs.
Discovery and naming
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Kentrosaurus was found in Tendaguru in Tanzania (then German East Africa ) by the excavation expedition (1909-1913) under Werner Janensch and was provisionally described in 1915 by Edwin Hennig . Hennig gave a detailed description in 1925. The name is derived from the ancient Greek kentron / κέντρον "pointed" and sauros / σαῦρος "lizard". The only species and thus type species is Kentrosaurus aethiopicus .
Hundreds of bones from this dinosaur have been found, most of them isolated. Most of the parts of the postcranial skeleton are known, but only part of the skull. A relatively complete assembled skeleton based on the lectotype is in the Berlin Museum of Natural History . It was described in detail by Janensch (1925) in its original assembly.
In the course of the renovation and redesign of the dinosaur hall from 2005 to 2007, the bones were restored and the skeleton was reassembled in a posture adapted to modern research results. Another mounted skeleton, albeit with many additions made of plaster, can be seen in the museum of the Institute for Geosciences at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen .
literature
- Edwin Hennig : Kentrosaurus aethiopicus the stegosauride of the Tendaguru. In: Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Natural Science in Berlin. Born 1915, No. 6, ISSN 0037-5942 , pp. 219-247, digitized .
- Edwin Hennig: Second message about the stegosaurids from Tendaguru. In: Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Natural Science in Berlin. Born 1916, No. 6, pp. 175-182, digitized .
- Edwin Hennig: Kentrurosaurus, non Doryphorosaurus. In: Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie. Born in 1916, ISSN 0372-9338 , p. 578.
- Edwin Hennig: Kentrurosaurus aethiopicus. The stegosaur finds from Tendaguru, German East Africa. In: Scientific results of the Tendaguru expedition 1909–1912. NF Series 1, Part 1, Lfg. 2 = Palaeontographica. Supplement. 7, 1, 1, 2, 1925, ISSN 0085-4611 , pp. 101-254.
- Werner Janensch : An erected skeleton of the stegosaur Kentrurosaurus aethiopicus E. Hennig from the Tendaguru layers of German East Africa. In: Scientific results of the Tendaguru expedition 1909–1912. NF Series 1, Part 1, Lfg. 2 = Palaeontographica. Supplement. 7, 1, 1, 2, 1925, pp. 257-276.
- 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 .
- David E. Fastovsky , David B. Weishampel: The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2005, ISBN 0-521-81172-4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holly E. Barden, Susannah CR Maidment: Evidence for sexual dimorphism in the stegosaurian dinosaur Kentrosaurus aethiopicus from the Upper Jurassic of Tanzania. In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 31, No. 3, ISSN 0272-4634 , 2011, pp. 641-651, doi : 10.1080 / 02724634.2011.557112 .
