The stegosaurus Also known to many who deal with dinosaurs only in passing: with the typical double row of bony plates on the back, the skeleton and its reconstructions make an unforgettable appearance. However, from a scientific point of view, the group has not been studied as friends of dinosaurs would like: there are only scattered fossil discoveries, so the relationship and the history of the origin of this group are far from clear. However, the bones of a newly discovered stegosaurus in China are now developing a state of knowledge: a specimen described in the “Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology” belongs to a previously unknown primitive species. Bashanosaurus primitiveus.
The bones are the oldest stegosaur remains found so far in Asia and represent one of the earliest representatives of the group, according to a Chinese team and researchers from the Natural History Museum in London. They determined that the skeletal remains discovered in central China belong to three animals that lived in the middle Jurassic period, about 168 million years ago. primitive It is therefore on an early branch of the stegosaur family tree, of which 14 species are known worldwide to date. reserved from primitive In addition to the characteristic shield bones, various other skeletal parts.
This indicates that the early stegosaurus may have been smaller and that some of the typical features of its later living relatives were less developed. Dinosaurs were similar to those discovered in China in the 1980s Chungkingosaurus fossilswhich is also among the primitive stegosaurs. primitive It also shows the primitive features typical of the common ancestors of stegosaurs and ankylosaurs. Both groups together form Eurypoda, or “broad feet”; Four-footed representatives, they built fairly slowly at the base of the dinosaurs in the bird trough.
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