Smoky vavelsky
| Smoky vavelsky | ||||||||||||
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Drawing skeleton reconstruction of Smok wawelski (fossil preserved bones in white) |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Triassic (late Norian / early Rhaetian ) | ||||||||||||
| by 208 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Smok | ||||||||||||
| Niedźwiedzki , Sulej & Dzik , 2012 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Smoky vavelsky | ||||||||||||
| Niedźwiedzki, Sulej & Dzik, 2012 | ||||||||||||
Smok wawelski is an archosaur from the late Upper Triassic (around 208 mya ) of Central Europe . Its heavily fragmented fossil remains were found in south-western Poland near the Upper Silesian district town of Lubliniec . The species was first scientifically described in 2012and named after the Wawel dragon in Polish folk tales .
Fossil record
Fossil survivors are fragmented skull bones, right and left humerus, right and left femur, right and left ilium , right and left ischium , various vertebrae, a rib and a chevron bone . All remains were found in close proximity within a 30 meter radius and are believed to have come from a single individual. Large, apparently three-toed footprints from the same formation could be of the same species. The type locality of S. wawelski is the clay pit at Lipie Śląskie near Lisowice, about 2 km west of Lubliniec in Silesia , which is known for its numerous fossils.
features
The reconstructed skeleton of Smok wawelski has an estimated length of 5 to 6 meters, the skull is 50 to 60 cm long. The holotype is a strongly autapomorphic brain skull , which had large muscle attachment points for very strong jaw muscles on its side surfaces and a funnel-shaped area on its underside, which was formed by a very broad basipterygoid bone.
Sawn teeth , a contact between the zygomatic bone and the quadratojugale , the antorbital window in front of the orbit and other group-specific features ( synapomorphies ) indicate that Smok wawelski belongs to the archosaurs. The postcranial skeleton shows a characteristic mosaic that both theropod and dinosaurs on " rauisuchide suggesting" archosaurs, which is why the authors in their first description of a more detailed systematic allocation of Smok have refrained one of eligible Archosauriergruppen.
Smok was larger than any other known carnivorous (meat-eating) archosaur from the Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic of Central Europe, surpassing both " Rauisuchier " such as Polonosuchus and Teratosaurus and theropod dinosaurs such as Liliensternus . In a worldwide comparison ( Postosuchus , Fasolasuchus , Liliensternus , Gojirasaurus , Zupaysaurus ) Smok was probably one of the largest archosaurs of its time.
More fossil finds
In addition to the remains of Smok wawelski , other elements of the fossil fauna were found during the excavation at the Lipie Śląskie fossil site. These included a large dicynodont animal , a small dinosauromorph , other small archosaurs ( pterosaurs and poposauroids ), amphibians (a large capitosaurid and a small plagiosaurid ), lungfish , hybodontal sharks and bony fish from the order Palaeonisciformes .
literature
- Grzegorz Niedźwiedzki, Tomasz Sulej, Jerzy Dzik: A large predatory archosaur from the Late Triassic of Poland. In: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 267-276, doi : 10.4202 / app.2010.0045 .
