Szechuanosaurus
A dubious Late Jurassic theropod from China.
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Szechuanosaurus is a genus of carnivorous theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of China. Its fossils, primarily isolated teeth, are considered non-diagnostic, leading many researchers to regard the genus as a nomen dubium. Despite this, it is often interpreted as a medium-sized allosaurid or metriacanthosaurid, possibly reaching lengths of around 7.3 meters.
Scientific classification
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumChordata
- ClassReptilia
- CladeDinosauria
- CladeSaurischia
- Clade
- Genus†Szechuanosaurus
Named by Young, 1942
Sources: Wikipedia taxobox: Szechuanosaurus (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Quick Facts
- Type species
- Szechuanosaurus campi
Facts from the source article.
Discovery and species
The genus Szechuanosaurus includes three named species over time. The first, Szechuanosaurus campi, was established in 1942 by Yang Zhongjian using four separate tooth specimens: IVPP V235, IVPP V236, IVPP V238, and IVPP V239. These teeth were not found together and together form the syntype series. Yang also assigned a very incomplete skeleton, UCMP 32102, to this species.
The species name honors Charles Lewis Camp, the American paleontologist who found that skeleton. A partial skeleton, CV 00214, was first listed in 1978 as a new species called Szechuanosaurus yandonensis, but it was later described in 1983 and placed under Szechuanosaurus campi. In 2004, Holtz and colleagues considered it the most primitive tetanuran. Daniel Chure referred this specimen to an invalid name, "Szechuanoraptor dongi," in 2000.
Carrano, Benson, and Sampson in 2012 instead synonymized it with Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis. The third species, Szechuanosaurus zigongensis, was named by Gao Yuhui in 1993 for a nearly complete skeleton, ZDM 9011, from the Middle Jurassic. This species was later moved to Yangchuanosaurus zigongensis by Carrano, Benson, and Sampson in 2012.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Szechuanosaurus (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the , each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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