Urbacodon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Urbacodon Fossil range: Late Cretaceous |
||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scientific classification | ||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| Species | ||||||||||||||||||
|
Urbacodon ("URBAC tooth") is a genus of troodontid dinosaur, a type of small carnivore. It lived in Uzbekistan during the early Late Cretaceous Period, about 95 million years ago. The first part of the name Urbacodon is an acronym, honouring the Uzbek, Russian, British, American and Canadian scientists who participated in its discovery. The type species, U. itemirensis, was named by Alexander Averianov and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2007 on the basis of a single left dentary with teeth from the Cenomanian Dzharakuduk Formation. Averianov and Sues also identified teeth as Urbacodon sp. from the nearby Turonian Bissekty Formation.[1]
The holotype dentary of U. itemirensis is 79.2 millimetres long (3.12 in) and has 32 teeth. Urbacodon resembles Byronosaurus and Mei but differs from most other Troodontidae in that its teeth lack serrations. It is distinguished from Byronosaurus by a less vascularized lateral dentary groove and more bulbous anterior tooth crowns, and from Mei by considerably larger size. Averianov and Sues viewed Urbacodon as more plesiomorphic than Troodon and Saurornithoides in having a straight dentary with fewer teeth, but did not attempt to place it on a cladogram.[1]
