Ceratosauria

Eukaryota

Ceratosaurs
Temporal range: Early Jurassic-Late Cretaceous, 199–65.5 Ma
Artist's reconstruction of Ceratosaurus nasicornis
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Saurischia
Suborder: Theropoda
Node: Neotheropoda
Infraorder: †Ceratosauria
Marsh, 1884
Subgroups

Ceratosaurs are members of a group of theropod dinosaurs defined as all theropods sharing a more recent common ancestry with Ceratosaurus than with birds. There is presently no universally agreed upon listing of species or diagnostic characters of Ceratosauria, though they were less derived anatomically than the more diverse Tetanurae. According to the latest and most accepted theory, Ceratosauria includes the Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous theropods Ceratosaurus, Elaphrosaurus, and Abelisaurus, found primarily (though not exclusively) in the Southern Hemisphere. Originally, Ceratosauria included the above dinosaurs plus the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic Coelophysoidea and Dilophosauridae, implying a much earlier divergence of ceratosaurs from other theropods. However, most recent studies have shown that coelophysoids and dilophosaurids do not form a natural group with other ceratosaurs, and are excluded from this group.

Contents

Distribution through time


Classification

Taxonomy

Phylogeny

The following cladogram follows an analysis by Xu Xing and colleagues, 2009.[1]

Ceratosauria

Spinostropheus


Deltadromeus

unnamed

Limusaurus


Elaphrosaurus


unnamed

Ceratosaurus

Abelisauroidea

Noasauridae


Abelisauridae




References

  1. ^ Xu, X., Clark, J.M., Mo, J., Choiniere, J., Forster, C.A., Erickson, G.M., Hone, D.W.E., Sullivan, C., Eberth, D.A., Nesbitt, S., Zhao, Q., Hernandez, R., Jia, C.-K., Han, F.-L., and Guo, Y. (2009). "A Jurassic ceratosaur from China helps clarify avian digital homologies." Nature, 459(18): 940-944. doi=10.1038/nature08124

External links