Mymoorapelta

Reconstructed skeleton of Mymoorapelta

• USA ( Colorado)

• Mymoorapelta Maysi Kirkland & Carpenter, 1994

Mymoorapelta is a little known genus of dinosaur bird Beck from the group of Ankylosauria. She lived in the Upper Jurassic and one of the few already known from this period ankylosauruses.

Features

With approximately 3 meters in length Mymoorapelta was a small Ankylar. Characteristic were the bony plates ( osteoderms ) that formed an armor of the hull, as with all members of this group. Above the pool there was a compiled adult, bony shield that also in other ankylosauruses (about Polacanthus ) occurs in a similar form, otherwise the arrangement of the bone plates is not known. Mymoorapelta moving quadruped ( on all fours ) continues, the limbs were short and strong. The skull is only fragmentarily known, the teeth were small and leaf-shaped and adapted as with all ankylosauruses to a plant-based diet.

Discovery and designation

From Mymoorapelta fractions of the skull, parts of the skeleton of three different animals as well as other individual bones are previously known. These fossil remains were found in the Morrison Formation in Colorado and first described in 1994. It is named this dinosaur after the abbreviation of the Mygatt -Moore quarry in which it was discovered, and the Greek -πελτα/-pelta, which means " sign". Only species and therefore type species is M. Maysi. The finds are dated to the Upper Jurassic ( Kimmeridgian ) at an age 157-152 million years.

System

Because of similarities in the construction of the bone plates Mymoorapelta is often classified in the group of Polacanthidae or Polacanthinae, but this is controversial. Other systems such as the Vickaryous M. (2004) see the fossils as too sparse for an accurate classification and thus lead him as " incertae sedis Ankylosauria ".