Tethyshadros
| Tethyshadros | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Holotype of Tethyshadros |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium to early Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
| 76.4 to 69.9 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Tethyshadros | ||||||||||||
| Dalla Vecchia , 2009 |
Tethyshadros (German: "Hadrosaur from the Tethys ") is a dinosaur from the group of hadrosaurs , whose well-preserved fossil remains were found in the Liburnian Formation near Villaggio del Pescatore in the northeast Italian province of Trieste and described in 2009.
The only species is Tethyshadros insularis . The fossils are dated in the Upper Cretaceous (late Campanian to early Maastrichtian) to an age of about 76 to 69 million years.
The holotype , with the catalog number SC 57021, is a completely preserved skeleton found in an anatomical context. It is one of the most complete dinosaur skeletons ever found. The habitat of Tethyshadros in the Upper Cretaceous was an archipelago in the Mesozoic Tethys Sea, formed by the Adriatic-Dinaric carbonate platform and similar to today's Bahamas . It had a maximum land area of about 100,000 km², about the size of Cuba .
features
Tethyshadros was about four meters long and is perhaps an example of an island dwarfing . The skeleton combines primitive and advanced, derived features. The skull of the holotype is 47.5 cm long, 18.5 cm high and, with the exception of that of the Edmontosaurus , more elongated than that of all other hadrosaurs.
Systematics
Tethyshadros is phylogenetically and morphologically close to the highly developed hadrosaur subfamilies Hadrosaurinae and Lambeosaurinae but cannot be assigned to any of the subfamilies. The probable systematic position of Tethyshadros is given by the following cladogram :
| Hadrosaurs (Hadrosauridae) |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The European hadrosaurs probably did not develop on the continent and did not colonize Europe from North America either, but from Asia through island hopping.
source
- Fabio M. Dalla Vecchia: Tethyshadros insularis, a new hadrosauroid dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous of Italy. In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 29, No. 4, 2009, ISSN 0272-4634 , pp. 1100-1116, doi : 10.1671 / 039.029.0428 .
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. 296, online .