Laquintasaura

Laquintasaura Temporal range: Early Jurassic, 200.91 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓ Hettangian
Reconstruction of Laquintasaura venezuelae
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	†Ornithischia
Clade:	†Thyreophora
Genus:	†Laquintasaura et al., 2014
Species:	†L. venezuelae
Binomial name
†Laquintasaura venezuelae et al., 2014

Laquintasaura is a genus of Venezuelan ornithischian dinosaur containing only the type species Laquintasaura venezuelae. The species is the first dinosaur to have been discovered in Venezuela.^[1][2][3]

Description[]

Laquintasaura was found in sediments of the Lower Jurassic, more precisely of the Hettangian of the La Quinta Formation, from which it takes its genus name.^[2][4] It is nested at the base of the Ornithischia, which included Stegosaurus, Iguanodon, and Triceratops. A phylogenetic analysis by Baron et al. (2017) recovered Laquintasaura as the sister-taxon to Scutellosaurus, within the clade Thyreophora.^[5]

Researcher Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London described Laquintasaura venezuelae as biped and having the size of a small dog.^[6] The largest femur found was 90 millimeters long, suggesting that the entire body of the bipedal dinosaur was approximately 1 meter long and 25 centimeters high at the hip.^[2][7][4] L. venezuelae, which is believed to have lived in groups,^[8] is thought to have been primarily herbivorous, although it is argued that it may have eaten large insects and other small animals.^[4][6] The premaxilla of L. venezuelae has 7 teeth and does not present a diastema close to the premaxillo-maxillary suture. These features of the premaxilla are common in basal forms of ornithischians and less common in derived forms, which have tended to convergently reduce the number of teeth in the premaxilla or even lose them altogether.^[9]

References[]