Lukousaurus
Lukousaurus Temporal range: Early Jurassic, Sinemurian
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Skull | |
Scientific classification ![]() | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Reptilia |
Clade: | Archosauromorpha |
Genus: | †Lukousaurus Young, 1940 |
Species: | †L. yini
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Binomial name | |
†Lukousaurus yini Young, 1940
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Lukousaurus is an archosauromorph based on most of a small skull's snout, displaying distinctive lachrymal horns, found in the Early Jurassic-age Lower Lufeng Formation, Yunnan, China and was described by Chung Chien Young in 1940.[1] The generic name refers to the Lugou Bridge, lit. “crossroads”, near Beijing, where the Sino-Japanese War started.[1] L. yini is tentatively classified as a theropod dinosaur by some allied to ceratosaurs, by others a coelurosaur. Its skull is rather robust for its size though the teeth were described by the author as typically theropodan. It may, however, be a crurotarsan or a primitive crocodilian.[2] Whatever Lukousaurus was, it was definitely an archosauromorph.[3]
In either the late 1930s or in 1940, the front half of a fossilized skull, which became the holotype of Lukousaurus yini, was discovered in , China.[1]
References[]
- ^ a b c C.-C. Young. (1940). Preliminary notes on the Lufeng vertebrate fossils. Bulletin of the Geological Society of China 20(3-4):235-239
- ^ Theropod Database Blog post about Lukousaurus
- ^ Knoll F., Rohrberg K. (2012). CT scanning, rapid prototyping and re-examination of a partial skull of a basal crocodylomorph from the Late Triassic of Germany. Swiss Journal of Geosciences 105:109–115.
- Prehistoric theropods
- Early Jurassic dinosaurs of Asia
- Taxa named by Yang Zhongjian
- Fossil taxa described in 1940
- Controversial dinosaur taxa
- Theropod stubs