Meroktenos
Meroktenos | |
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Right femur | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Clade: | Saurischia |
Clade: | †Sauropodomorpha |
Clade: | †Anchisauria |
Genus: | †Meroktenos Peyre de Fabrègues & Allain, 2016 |
Type species | |
†Meroktenos thabanensis (Gauffre, 1993)
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Synonyms | |
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Meroktenos is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period of what is now Lesotho.
Discovery and naming
In 1959,
In 1993,
Gauffre assumed that the specimen had been found in the
In 2016, M. thabanensis was appointed to the separate genus Meroktenos by Claire Peyre de Fabrègues and Ronan Allain. The genus name is a combination of ancient Greek μηρός, meros ("thigh") and κτῆνος, ktènos ("beast").[2] The combinatio nova thus becomes Meroktenos thabanensis, the type species is the original Melanorosaurus thabanensis.
The
Description
Meroktenos has a femur length of around forty-eight centimeters,[2] suggesting a body length of about four meters.
In 2016, a revised list of distinguishing traits was given. The blade height of the ilium, measured from the highest point of the antitrochanter to the upper edge of the blade is 60% of the total height of the ilium, including peduncles. The rear blade of the ilium is roughly triangular in side view. The femur is very compact with a robusticity index, length divided by the circumference of the shaft, of 2.09. The femur has a straight shaft in both side and front views. The femoral shaft is substantially wider transversely than it is wide in side view, with a ratio of 1.58. On the rear of the femoral shaft, the fourth trochanter is oriented obliquely, running from the upper and inner side to the lower and outer side.[2]
Phylogeny
In 2016, Meroktenos was placed in the
A 2021 study by Pol and colleagues found Meroktenos to be a member of Lessemsauridae, being the sister taxon of a clade formed by Kholumolumo and Ledumahadi:[6]
Sauropodiformes
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Palaeobiology
The relative transverse width of the femur, the eccentricity, is remarkably high for such a small animal. These proportions were known previously only from Sauropoda and explained as an adaptation to a very high absolute weight. Because the holotype probably was not a young animal and is unlikely to have attained giant proportions, the trait must have had a different function.[2]
See also
Notes
- ^ Costedoat D., 1962, Etude de quelques reptiles fossiles, thesis, University of Paris
- ^ PMID 26855874.
- ^ a b Gauffre, F-X (1993). "The most recent Melanorosauridae (Saurischia, Prosauropoda), Lower Jurassic of Lesotho, with remarks on the prosauropod phylogeny". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie. 11: 648–654.
- S2CID 218779841.
- ^ Gauffre F-X., 1996, Phylogénie des dinosaures prosauropodes et étude d’un prosauropode du Trias supérieur d’Afrique australe Dissertation, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
- .