Hungarosaurus
Hungarosaurus | |
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Right dentary | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Clade: | †Ornithischia |
Clade: | †Thyreophora |
Clade: | †Ankylosauria |
Family: | †Nodosauridae |
Subfamily: | †Nodosaurinae |
Clade: | †Struthiosaurini |
Genus: | †Hungarosaurus Ősi, 2005 |
Species: | †H. tormai
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Binomial name | |
†Hungarosaurus tormai Ősi, 2005
|
Hungarosaurus tormai (meaning 'Hungarian lizard' from the
Hungarosaurus walked on four legs and its body was covered with hundreds of
Discovery and naming
The species was named by Atilla Ősi in 2005. The generic name is derived from Hungary and the Greek sauros, lizard. The specific name honours András Torma, the amateur paleontologist who discovered the fossil site in 2000.
Four specimens of Hungarosaurus tormai are known, all collected from an open-pit bauxite mine near the village of Iharkút, Veszprém County, in the Bakony Mountains (Transdanubian Range) of western Hungary. The quarry exposes the Csehbánya Formation (which overlies the Halimba Formation, also Cretaceous in age), which is a floodplain and channel deposit consisting largely of sandy clays and sandstone beds. The specimen designated as the holotype is MTM Gyn/404 (in the collections of the Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum, Budapest, Hungary) and consists of 450 bones, including portions of the skull (premaxilla, left prefrontal, left lacrimal, right postorbital, jugal and quadratojugal, left frontal, pterygoid, vomer, the right quadrate and a fragment of the left quadrate, basioccipital, one hyoid), an incomplete right mandible, three cervical vertebrae, six dorsal vertebrae, ten caudal vertebrae, ossified tendon fragments, three cerival and thirteen dorsal ribs, five chevrons, the left scapulocoracoid, right scapula, portions of the right manus, a partial pelvis, and more than one hundred osteoderms.[1]
Description
Hungarosaurus was a small nodosaur, measuring 4–4.8 metres (13–16 ft) in length and weighing 650–1,000 kilograms (1,430–2,200 lb).[2][3] The skull of this dinosaur is ornamented and estimated to have been 32–36 centimetres in length.[4]
Phylogeny
The studies show that Hungarosaurus is slightly more advanced than Struthiosaurus, but more primitive than the North American nodosaurids Silvisaurus, Sauropelta and Pawpawsaurus. This was supported by cladistic analysis, which suggests that it is a basal member of the family Nodosauridae.
Paleoecology
The exposure of the Csehbánya Formation that produced Hungarosaurus tormai has also yielded remains of bony fishes,
See also
References
- ^ a b Ősi, Attila (2005). "Hungarosaurus tormai, a new ankylosaur (Dinosauria) from the Upper Cretaceous of Hungary." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology '25 (2): 370–383
- ^ Atilla Ősi, & E. Prondvai, 2013, "Sympatry of two ankylosaurs (Hungarosaurus and cf. Struthiosaurus) in the Santonian of Hungary", Cretaceous Research 44: 58–63
- )
- ^ Ősi A, Magyar J, Rosta K, Vickaryous M. 2021. Cranial ornamentation in the Late Cretaceous nodosaurid ankylosaur Hungarosaurus. PeerJ 9:e11010, doi: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11010