Shamosaurus
Shamosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
Lower Cretaceous ( Aptium to Albium ) | ||||||||||||
126.3 to 100.5 million years | ||||||||||||
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Systematics | ||||||||||||
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Scientific name | ||||||||||||
Shamosaurus | ||||||||||||
Tumanova , 1983 | ||||||||||||
Art | ||||||||||||
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Shamosaurus was a genus of pelvic dinosaurs from the Ankylosauria group that lived in the Lower Cretaceous in East Asia.
features
Shamosaurus was a relatively large ankylosaur. The head measured 36 centimeters, the total length could have been 5 to 7 meters, but is uncertain because only a few bones of the body skeleton were found. The comparatively narrow skull was characterized, among other things, by the round scaly bone (squamosum) and the large eye sockets and nostrils. Very little is known of the rest of the body; like all ankylosaurs, it was probably a quadruple dinosaur covered by bone scales that ate plants.
Discovery and naming
The fossil remains of Shamosaurus were discovered in Mongolia in the 1980s and named after "Shamo", an old name for the Gobi desert . The only species and thus type species is S. scutatus . The finds are dated to the late Lower Cretaceous ( Aptian to Albian , about 125 to 100 million years ago).
Systematics
The closest relative of Shamosaurus may have been the Gobisaurus , which occurred in the same region (but later) . The two genera differ, among other things, in the length of the row of teeth ( much longer in Shamosaurus ) and by a protrusion of the ploughshare, which only occurs in Gobisaurus .
Shamosaurus and Gobisaurus form an unnamed clade that forms the sister taxon to the Ankylosaurinae (more highly developed Ankylosauridae ) (see systematics of the Ankylosauridae ).
literature
- Matthew K. Vickaryous, Teresa Maryańska , David B. Weishampel : Ankylosauria. 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. 363-392.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Gregory S. Paul : The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-13720-9 , pp. 229-230, online .