Riojasaurus
| Riojasaurus | ||||||||||||
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Live reconstruction of Riojasaurus incertus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Triassic ( Norium ) | ||||||||||||
| 228 to 208.5 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Riojasaurus | ||||||||||||
| Bonaparte , 1967 | ||||||||||||
| Art | ||||||||||||
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Riojasaurus was a herbivorous dinosaur from the Plateosauria group . He lived in the Upper Triassic ( Norium ) and is named after the Argentine province of La Rioja , where his fossils were first found.
description
Riojasaurus reached a length of six to eleven meters and weighed up to three tons. The neck and tail were elongated, but the head was small. The limbs and bones of the hip and shoulder girdle were strong, but the vertebrae were hollow, presumably to save weight. The hind legs were slightly longer than the front legs, the feet each ended in five clawed toes. The teeth were jagged and spoon-shaped, presumably it fed on araucarias and other conifers .
From the structure of the limbs and ankles, one concludes that the Riojasaurus , unlike other prosauropods, could only move on all fours, i.e. quadruped .
Fossil finds
Around 20 fossils, including complete ones, have been found in Argentina from both young and adult animals. The first description was made by the South American paleontologist José Bonaparte in 1969.
literature
- José F. Bonaparte : Dos nuevas "faunas" de reptiles triásicos de Argentina. In: Gondwana Stratigraphy. IUGS Symposium, Buenos Aires, October 1–15, 1967. = La estratigrafía del Gondwana. Coloquio de la UICG, Buenos Aires, 1-15 de octubre de 1967 (= Earth Sciences. Vol. 2, ZDB ID 448604-3 ). Unesco, Paris 1969, pp. 283-306.
- José F. Bonaparte, José A. Pumares: Notas sobre el primer craneo de Riojasaurus incertus (Dinosauria, Prosauropoda, Melanorosauridae) del Triasico Superior de La Rioja, Argentina. In: Ameghiniana. Vol. 32, No. 4, 1995, ISSN 0002-7014 , pp. 341-349.
- Wilfried Westheide , Reinhard Rieger : Special Zoology. Part 2: vertebrates or skulls. Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart et al. 2004, ISBN 3-8274-0900-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gregory S. Paul : The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-13720-9 , p. 170, online .