Lourinhasaurus

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Lourinhasaurus

Extinct (fossil)

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Saurischia
Suborder:	Sauropodomorpha
Infraorder:	Sauropoda
(unranked)	Eusauropoda
Genus:	Lourinhasaurus Dantas et al., 1998

Species

Lourinhasaurus alenquerensis

Lourinhasaurus alenquerensis is a sauropod dinosaur hailing from Late Jurassic strata from two localities in Estremadura, Portugal. It was described by Dantas et. al in 1998.

The first find in 1957, a partial fossil skeleton found near Alenquer, was dubbed "Apatosaurus" alenquerensis by Lapparent and Zbyszewski. However, the find of another partial skeleton, including a tooth and 100 gastroliths, in co-eval strata near the town of Lourinhã in 1983, allowed the identification of the fossils as a distinct form from Apatosaurus, hence the generic name referring the new locality while the specific epithet, carried over from the old designation, pertains to the Alenquer locality.

Lourinhasaurus is a 17-meter-long herbivorous dinosaur characterized by the morphology of its first seven dorsal vertebrae with relatively high, bifurcated neural apophyses; also, the posterior cervical vertebrae have prominent ventral longitudinal keels on their centra. L. alenquerensis due to the lack of a skull is only classifiable as an eusauropod and it was found by Upchurch (2004) to be the sister taxon to Neosauropoda. It's thought it may have resembled Camarasaurus, albeit with proportionately longer forelimbs.

In the meantime a third fossil sauropod skeleton was discovered. It had passing similarities to Lourinhasaurus, thus being referred to the genus at first, but later was recognized as different enough to warrant a description under the genus Dinheirosaurus. For some time stood the possibility that these genera were synonyms, but further phylogenetic analysis dispelled such a notion.

[edit] References

Lourinhasaurus@Dinosauria.com
See entry on Lourinhasaurus at DinoData (registration required, free)
Upchurch, P., Barrett, P.M. and Dodson, P. 2004. Sauropoda. In The Dinosauria, 2nd edition. D. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.). University of California Press, Berkeley. Pp. 259-322.