Sinosaurus
Sign in to saveSinosaurus (meaning "Chinese lizard") is an extinct genus of basal theropod dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic (Hettangian-Sinemurian). Fossils of the animal have been found in the Lufeng Formation, in the Yunnan Province of China. The type species, S. triassicus, was named by Chung Chieng Young in 1940. A second species, S. sinensis, was originally assigned to Dilophosaurus, but was later reassigned to Sinosaurus. Sinosaurus is morphologically similar to Dilophosaurus including the presence of a similarly shaped cranial crest, though its precise taxonomic position is uncertain, an
Article
14 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Description
- Size
- Skull
- Postcranial skeleton
- Classification
- Paleobiology
- Crest function
- Feeding
- Paleopathology
- Paleoecology
- Provenance and occurrence
- Fauna and habitat
- References
Sinosaurus (meaning "Chinese lizard") is an extinct genus of basal theropod dinosaur which lived during the Early Jurassic (Hettangian-Sinemurian). Fossils of the animal have been found in the Lufeng Formation, in the Yunnan Province of China. The type species, S. triassicus, was named by Chung Chieng Young in 1940. A second species, S. sinensis, was originally assigned to Dilophosaurus, but was later reassigned to Sinosaurus. Sinosaurus is morphologically similar to Dilophosaurus including the presence of a similarly shaped cranial crest, though its precise taxonomic position is uncertain, and the two genera may not be closely related.
==Discovery and naming== The composite term Sinosaurus comes from Sinae, the Latin word for the Chinese, and the Greek word '' () meaning "lizard"; thus "Chinese lizard". The specific name, triassicus, refers to the Triassic, the period that the fossils were originally thought to date from. Sinosaurus'' was described and named by Chung Chien Young, who is known as the 'Father of Chinese Vertebrate Paleontology', in 1940. thumb|left|Maxilla of specimen ZLJT01