Dravidosaurus

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Dravidosaurus Fossil range: Late Cretaceous
Conservation status
Extinct (fossil)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Sauropsida Superorder: ?Dinosauria Order: ?Ornithischia Suborder: ?Thyreophora Infraorder: ?Stegosauria Genus: Dravidosaurus Yadagiri & Ayyasami, 1979 Species: D. blanfordi Yadagiri & Ayyasami, 1979

Dravidosaurus (meaning "Dravidanadu lizard", Dravidanadu being a region in the southern part of India where the remains were discovered) is a genus of prehistoric reptile which was once thought to be the last surviving member of the Stegosaur or "plated dinosaurs". With an estimated length of 3 metres (10 ft), it would have also been the smallest member of the group.

It lived in the Late Cretaceous period (Coniacian) of what is now India. It is only known from a poorly preserved skeleton containing a partial skull, a tooth and some plates elements. The badly weathered remains were discovered in marine deposits of the province of Tamil Nadu in South India.^[1] During the 1990s, further study indicated it was a plesiosaur and not a dinosaur.^[2][3] The claim is disputed and new material suggests it was not a plesiosaur and that parts of the remains may still belong to a stegosaur after all.^[4]

[edit] References

1. ^ Yadagiri, P. and Ayyasami, K., 1979, "A new stegosaurian dinosaur from Upper Cretaceous sediments of south India", JOURNAL OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF INDIA 20(11); 521-530
2. ^ Chatterjee, S. & Rudra, D. K., 1996. "KT events in India: impact, rifting, volcanism and dinosaur extinction," in Novas & Molnar, eds., Proceedings of the Gondwanan Dinosaur Symposium, Brisbane, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum 39(3): iv + 489–731 : 489-532
3. ^ http://www.users.qwest.net/~jstweet1/stegosauria.htm
4. ^ Galton P.M. and Upchurch P., 2004, "Stegosauria" in D. B. Weishampel, H. Osmólska, and P. Dodson (eds.), The Dinosauria (2nd edition). University of California Press, Berkeley 343-362