Lukousaurus

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iLukousaurus
Fossil range: Late Triassic-Early Jurassic

Extinct (fossil)

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	?Dinosauria
Order:	?Saurischia
Suborder:	?Theropoda
Genus:	Lukousaurus

Binomial name

Lukousaurus yini
Young, 1948

Lukousaurus is a taxon based on most of a small skull’s snout, displaying distinctive lachrymal horns, found in the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic Fengjiahe Formation, Yunnan, China and was described by Chung Chien Young in 1948. The generic name refers to the Lukou Bridge, lit. “crossroads”, near Beijing, where the Sino-Japanese War started. 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 non-dinosaurian crocodile-relative.