Juratyrant
| Juratyrant Temporal range: Late Jurassic, 149Ma | |
|---|---|
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| Restoration illustrating known fossil remains in gray | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | Theropoda |
| Family: | †Proceratosauridae |
| Genus: | †Juratyrant Brusatte & Benson, 2013 |
| Type species | |
| †Stokesosaurus langhami Benson, 2008 | |
| Species | |
|
†Juratyrant langhami (Benson, 2008) | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Stokesosaurus langhami Benson, 2008 | |
Juratyrant (meaning "Jurassic tyrant") is a tyrannosauroid dinosaur genus from the late Jurassic period (early Tithonian age) of England. The genus contains a single species, J. langhami.
Discovery
The species is known from a single specimen consisting of an "associated partial skeleton represented by a complete pelvis" as well as a partially complete leg, and neck, back, and tail vertebrae.[1] This skeleton was discovered in 1984 in Dorset. The specimen was mentioned in several papers, but was not formally described until 2008. The species was named in honor of commercial fossil collector[2] Peter Langham, who uncovered the specimen. The specimen was discovered in strata of the Kimmeridge Clay dating from the Tithonian, the final stage of the Late Jurassic, and belonging to the Pectinatites pectinatus ammonite zone, indicating the fossil is between 149.3 and 149 million years old.[1]
Classification
The species was originally assigned to the genus Stokesosaurus, as Stokesosaurus langhami, by Roger Benson in 2008. However, later studies showed that it was not necessarily a close relative of Stokesosaurus clevelandi, the type species of that genus. It was formally re-classified in its own genus, Juratyrant, by Benson and Stephen Brusatte in 2013.[3]
Below is a cladogram placing Juratyrant as a sister taxon to Stokesosaurus inside Proceratosauridae. It was published by Loewen et al. in 2013.[4]
| Tyrannosauroidea |
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References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Benson, R.B.J. (2008). "New information on Stokesosaurus, a tyrannosauroid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from North America and the United Kingdom." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 28(3):732-750. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2008)28[732:NIOSAT]2.0.CO;2.
- ↑ Taylor, M.A., 1989, " 'Fine Fossils For Sale' — the Professional Collector and the Museum", Geological Curator 5(2): 55-64
- ↑ Brusatte, S.L. and Benson, R.B.J. (2013). "The systematics of Late Jurassic tyrannosauroids (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Europe and North America." Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 58(1): 47-54. doi:10.4202/app.2011.0141
- ↑ Loewen, M. A.; Irmis, R. B.; Sertich, J. J. W.; Currie, P. J.; Sampson, S. D. (2013). "Tyrant Dinosaur Evolution Tracks the Rise and Fall of Late Cretaceous Oceans". In Evans, David C. PLoS ONE 8 (11): e79420. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079420.