Lagosuchus
| Lagosuchus | ||||||||||||
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Lagosuchus , living and skeletal reconstructions |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Anisium to Ladinium ( Middle Triassic ) | ||||||||||||
| 245 to 228 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Lagosuchus | ||||||||||||
| Romer , 1972 |
Lagosuchus is a genus of diapsid reptiles from the Central Triassic of Argentina .
Lagosuchus was only about 30 centimeters long. The limbs were long and slender; the length of the hind legs clearly exceeded that of the front legs. The shin bone (tibia) was longer than the thigh bone (femur). The pubic bone and iliac bone were elongated from the pelvic bones as in the dinosaurs . As with these, the foot is steered between the ankle bones ankle (astragalus) and heel bone (calcaneus) above and the tarsal bones (tarsalia) and metatarsals (metatarsals) below. The (proximal) ends of the tarsal bones facing the body are not yet closely connected to the shinbone (tibia), as in the dinosaurs.
Lagosuchus , together with the related genus Lagerpeton , was very close to the origin of the dinosaurs . However, since the skull is only very poorly known ( only the hind legs of Lagerpeton are known), it is not possible to make a precise comparison with early dinosaurs and therefore the systematic position of Lagosuchus cannot be precisely determined.
The skeleton as well as footprints from that time show that the animals were usually quadruped (four-legged). But you could occasionally have walked biped (two-legged).
literature
- Robert L. Carroll : Paleontology and Evolution of the Vertebrates. Thieme, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-13774-401-6 .
