Quaesitosaurus
Sign in to saveQuaesitosaurus (meaning "extraordinary lizard") is a genus of nemegtosaurid sauropod containing only the type species, Q. orientalis, described in 1983. It lived from 72 to 71 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous epoch in the Barun Goyot Formation. With long, low and horse-like with frontally located peg-teeth, the skull of Quaesitosaurus is similar enough to the skull of Diplodocus and its kin to have prompted informed speculation that the missing body was built like those of diplodocids.
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4 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Description
- Classification
- References
Quaesitosaurus (meaning "extraordinary lizard") is a genus of nemegtosaurid sauropod containing only the type species, Q. orientalis, described in 1983. It lived from 72 to 71 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous epoch in the Barun Goyot Formation. With long, low and horse-like with frontally located peg-teeth, the skull of Quaesitosaurus is similar enough to the skull of Diplodocus and its kin to have prompted informed speculation that the missing body was built like those of diplodocids.
==Discovery and naming== During the Combined Soviet-Mongolian Paleontological Expeditions in 1971, an isolated, incomplete sauropod skull and nearly complete mandible were unearthed at a fossil site in the Upper Cretaceous bluffs of the Barun Goyot Formation near Shar Tsav, Mongolia. The fossils were later transported to the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (then the USSR Academy of Sciences) where they were catalogued as PIN 3906/2. The specimen wasn't described until 1983, when S. M. Kurzanov and A. F. Bannikov named it Quaesitosaurus orientalis, the genus name meaning "abnormal lizard" after the abnormal skull anatomy and the species name meaning "eastern", referring to the fossil's origin in Mongolia. It is possible that Nemegtosaurus, also known from only skull material, is a very close relative of Quaesitosaurus.