Lusitanosaurus
Lusitanosaurus (meaning "Portuguese lizard") is a genus of reptile from the Sinemurian stage of Early Jurassic of Portugal, maybe from the Coimbra Formation. It was considered the second example of the Dinosaurian group Thyreophora from the Sinemurian of Europe and it the oldest known dinosaur from the Iberian Peninsula, but this affinity has been contested. It is based on a large left maxilla with teeth that was lost in the fire at Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Lisbon, in 1978.
Article
6 sectionsContents
- Description
- History of discovery
- Classification
- Paleoenvironment
- References
- External links
Lusitanosaurus (meaning "Portuguese lizard") is a genus of reptile from the Sinemurian stage of Early Jurassic of Portugal, maybe from the Coimbra Formation. It was considered the second example of the Dinosaurian group Thyreophora from the Sinemurian of Europe and it the oldest known dinosaur from the Iberian Peninsula, but this affinity has been contested. It is based on a large left maxilla with teeth that was lost in the fire at Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência, Lisbon, in 1978.
==Description== The fossil consists of a single partial left maxilla, an upper jaw bone, with seven teeth. The jaw measured 10.5 cm, with an estimated skull of 38.7 cm for the living animal. The teeth were described to be similar to those of Scelidosaurus, which approaches it narrowly by the presence of important anterior and posterior basilar points on each tooth. The maxilla was clearly bigger, being the double of the size than the maxilla of Scelidosaurus. Lapparent & Zbyszewski vinculated it originally with Scelidosaurus and assigned the two to Stegosauria, he described that the teeth present were different to Scelidosaurus. Ginsburg cited the specimen and note a bigger size than the holotype of Scelidosaurus.