Niobrarasaurus

• USA ( Kansas)

• N. coleii (Flour, 1936)

Niobrarasaurus is a little known genus of dinosaur bird Beck from the group of Ankylosauria.

Features

With an estimated 5 meters in length Niobrarasaurus was a medium-sized Ankylar. As with all members of this group, his body was covered with an armor of bony plates, the exact configuration is not known, however. The fuselage was stocky limbs short and strong. The skull is preserved only in fragments, but he pointed at its front end a pattern on. This dinosaur was moving like all Ankylosauria quadruped ( on all fours ) and continued fed on plants.

Discovery and designation

The fossil remains of Niobrarasaurus were in the 1930s in the Niobrara Formation in the U.S. state of Kansas discovered by Virgil Cole and first first described under the name Hierosaurus. According to recent studies in the 1990s, the animal was named after the site Niobrarasaurus. Only known type and therefore the type species is N. coleii. The finds are dated to the Late Cretaceous ( between early and middle Campanian ) at an age of around 83-76 million years.

System

Due to similarities with Nodosaurus Niobrarasaurus is sometimes reckoned with within the Ankylosauria to the group of Nodosauridae. 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 ".