Pawpawsaurus

Pawpawsaurus campbelli, skull

• North America (Texas )

• Pawpawsaurus campbelli Lee, 1996

Pawpawsaurus is a genus of bird Beck dinosaur from the group of Ankylosauria. She was among the Nodosauridae and lived during the Late Cretaceous in North America.

Features

From Pawpawsaurus is so far only the skull is known. He was about 25 inches long, with consequent estimates of the total length of 4.5 meters. The skull was like all Nodosauridae relatively elongated and narrow, but showed some archaic features. Thus, the premaxilla was wearing ( the foremost part of the upper jaw ) still some teeth, the bony palate was limited to the front end of the palatal region and the bony nasal septum was not yet fully developed. The top of the skull was of small bony plates covered Pawpawsaurus was the first Nodosauridae in which ossified eyelids (which are more common in Ankylosauridae ), were discovered. The teeth were small and leaf-shaped and adapted as with all Ankylosauria to a plant-based diet.

The rest of the body is known only by single, dubious bone finds. Like all Ankylosauria Pawpawsaurus should be moved on all fours and have possessed an armor of bony plates.

Discovery and designation

Fossil remains of Pawpawsaurus were discovered in Tarrant County in the U.S. state of Texas and first described in 1996. The name is derived from the locality, the Paw -Paw lineup. Only species and therefore type species is P. campbelli. The finds are (late Albian ) dated to the late Cretaceous in age 107-100 million years ago.

System

Pawpawsaurus is expected within the Ankylosauria to the basal representatives of Nodosauridae and is probably closely related to Sauropelta and Silvisaurus. From the same formation, there are the findings of another Ankylosauriers called Texasetes of which so far only parts of the postcranial skeleton were found. Maybe it involves the same genus as Pawpawsaurus.