Micropachycephalosaurus
| Micropachycephalosaurus | ||||||||
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ) | ||||||||
| 76.4 to 72 million years | ||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||
| Micropachycephalosaurus | ||||||||
| Dong , 1978 | ||||||||
| Art | ||||||||
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Micropachycephalosaurus is a little known genus of the bird's pelvis dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the group of the Pachycephalosauria .
With an estimated length of 0.5 to 1 meter, Micropachycephalosaurus was one of the smallest pachycephalosaurs. However, so far only parts of the lower jaw and individual bones of the body skeleton are known. These sparse finds indicate that they belong to the pachycephalosaurs, but a more precise classification is not possible. That is why it has long been listed as Pachycephalosauria incertae sedis or even as a nomen dubium . In a later work it was found that the genus is valid, but due to the lack of clear diagnostic features, it cannot be clearly assigned to the pachycephalosaurs and should therefore be treated as Cerapoda incertae sedis.
The finds come from the Wangshi group in the Chinese province of Shandong and were first described in 1978. The generic name - one of the longest of all dinosaurs - is derived from the words mikros (= "small"), pachys (= "thick"), cephale (= "head") and sauros (= "lizard") and accordingly means " little thick-headed lizard ". The type and only known species is M. hongtuyanensis . The finds were chronostratigraphically dated to the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ), which geochronologically corresponds to the period of about 76 to 72 million years.
literature
- Teresa Maryańska , Ralph E. Chapman, David B. Weishampel : Pachycephalosauria. 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. 464-477.
- Robert M. Sullivan: A taxonomic review of the Pachycephalosauridae (Dinosauria: Ornithischia). In: Spencer G. Lucas, Robert M. Sullivan (Eds.): Late Cretaceous Vertebrates from the Western Interior (= New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Bulletin. 35, ISSN 1524-4156 ). New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque NM 2006, pp. 347–365, digital version (PDF; 4.79 MB) .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard J. Butler, Qi Zhao: The small-bodied ornithischian dinosaurs Micropachycephalosaurus hongtuyanensis and Wannanosaurus yansiensis from the Late Cretaceous of China in: Cretaceous Research , Volume 30, Issue 1, 2009, pp. 63–77, ISSN 0195-6671 , doi: 10.1016 / j.cretres.2008.03.002 , accessed on February 13, 2019
