| Brachypodosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | †Ornithischia (?) |
| Genus: | †Brachypodosaurus Chakravarti, 1934 |
| Species: | †B. gravis |
| Binomial name | |
| †Brachypodosaurus gravis Chakravarti, 1934 | |
Brachypodosaurus (meaning "short-footed lizard") is a dubious genus of dinosaur, possibly an ornithischian, from the Late Cretaceous Lameta Formation (Maastrichtian) in India.
The only remains discovered so far for this animal consist of a single fossil bone, excavated at the Chota Simla Hill near Jabalpur. In 1934, geologist Dhirendra Kishore Chakravarti, of the Geological Museum of the Banaras Hindu University, considered it a humerus, of a stegosaurian. He named it as the type species Brachypodosaurus gravis. The generic name is derived from Greek βραχύς, brachys, "short", and πούς, pous, "foot". The specific name gravis means "heavy" in Latin.[1] Chakravarti hereby became the first local scientist to name a dinosaur.
The holotype is IM V9. The bone is over a foot long. Chakravarti based his identification of the element as a humerus on the presence of a large crest on the shaft, which he took for the deltopectoral crest. The status as a (dinosaurian) humerus is problematic. The bone is flat, has a crest on the other side of the shaft also, is not twisted around its longitudinal axis, is strongly constricted above and below the crests and lacks a clear caput or condyles. In any case, it lacks stegosaurian synapomorphies.[2] On the assumption it might at least be some member of the Thyreophora, it has been considered a possible ankylosaurian, the ankylosaurs being a sister group of the Stegosauria that survived into the Late Cretaceous. Even then, however, it was considered a nomen dubium as so few remains of the animal have been found.[3] In 2004, Matthew Lamanna e.a. considered it unlikely that any Ornithischia were present in the Maastrichtian of India.[4] The other Late Cretaceous genus from India originally described as a stegosaur, Dravidosaurus, is also of dubious validity, potentially based on plesiosaurian remains.
References
- ↑ Chakravarti, D. K., 1934, "On a stegosaurian humerus from the Lameta beds of Jubbulpore", Quarterly Journal of the Geological, Mining, and Metallurgical Society of India, 30; 75–79
- ↑ Wilson, J. A., P. C. Sereno, S. Srivastava, D. K. Bhatt, A. Khosla, and A. Sahni. 2003. "A new abelisaurid (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Lameta Formation (Cretaceous, Maastrichtian) of India", Contributions from the Museum of Paleontology of the University of Michigan, 31:1–42
- ↑ Maryanska T., 1977. "Ankylosauridae (Dinosauria) from Mongolia", Palaeontologia Polonica 37:85–151
- ↑ Lamanna, Matthew C.; Smith, Joshua B.; Attia, Yousry S.; Dodson, Peter (2004). "From dinosaurs to dyrosaurids (Crocodyliformes): Removal of the post-Cenomanian (Late Cretaceous) record of Ornithischia from Africa". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 24 (3): 764. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2004)024[0764:FDTDCR]2.0.CO;2. S2CID 16525132.