Orosaurus
Sign in to saveOrosaurus ("mountain lizard") is a dubious genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa, containing a single species, O. capensis.
Wikidata facts
- Parent taxon
- Plateosauridae
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- taxon rank
- genus
- taxon name
- Orosaurus
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- Classification
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Orosaurus ("mountain lizard") is a dubious genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur from the Late Triassic of South Africa, containing a single species, O. capensis.
==Classification== The holotype was discovered in 1863. It was first described by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1867 based on holotype NHMUK R1626, a proximal end of a left tibia (misidentified as a distal femur). However, Huxley declined to provide a species name. In his 1889 catalogue of fossil reptiles in the Natural History Museum in London, Richard Lydekker mistakenly considered Orosaurus preoccupied by the lizard genus Oreosaurus and coined Orinosaurus capensis for NHMUK R1626. Along with Euskelosaurus, Lydekker considered Orosaurus (Orinosaurus of his usage) to be an ornithischian dinosaur.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Orosaurus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.