Lourinhasaurus

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Lourinhasaurus

Fossil

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 (meaning "Lourinhã lizard") was a sauropod dinosaur genus hailing from Late Jurassic strata from two localities in Estremadura, Portugal. It was described by Dantas et. al in 1998. Its type species is L. alenquerensis, named for the locality of Alenquer.

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 there was the possibility that these genera were synonyms, but further phylogenetic analysis dispelled such a notion.

Lourinhasaurus should not be confused with Lourinhanosaurus, a theropod dinosaur also found near Lourinhã.

[edit] References

Lourinhasaurus@Dinosauria.com
Lourinhasaurus at DinoData
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.