Crichtonsaurus
- China (Liaoning)
- Crichtonsaurus bohlini
Crichtonsaurus is a genus of bird Beck dinosaur ( Ornithischia ) from the group of Ankylosauria.
Features
From Crichtonsaurus only parts of the lower jaw with some teeth, several bone plates and isolated parts of the postcranial skeleton are known to date. It must have been a rather smaller Ankylar with an estimated 3 meters in length. His physique is likely to have complied with that of the other Ankylar: the stout hull was supported by four short, powerful limbs, bony plates ( osteoderms ) formed a armor that protected the body. The teeth were small and leaf-shaped and adapted as with all ankylosauruses to a plant-based diet.
Discovery and designation
The fossil remains of Crichtonsaurus were discovered in the Sunjiawan formation in the Chinese province of Liaoning and first described in 2002 by Dong Zhiming. It is named this dinosaur by Michael Crichton (1942-2008), the author of Jurassic Park, which was also known by the same name film. Only known and thus the type species is C. bohlini, the specific epithet honors the Swedish paleontologist Birger Bohlin. The finds are dated to the early Late Cretaceous ( Cenomanian Turonian or ) to an age of 100 and 90 million years.
Because of sparse finds the systematic classification of Crichtonsaurus within the Ankylosauria is difficult. M. Vickaryous et al. ( 2004) present him as " incertae sedis Ankylosauria ".