Uteodon
Temporal range: Late Jurassic,
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Skeleton at the Carnegie Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: †Ornithischia
Clade: †Ornithopoda
Clade: †Ankylopollexia
Clade: †Styracosterna
Genus: †Uteodon
McDonald, 2011
Species:
†U. aphanoecetes
Binomial name
†Uteodon aphanoecetes
(Carpenter & Wilson, 2008)
Synonyms

Uteodon (meaning "Ute tooth") is a genus of herbivorous iguanodontian dinosaur. It is a basal iguanodontian which lived during the late Jurassic period (Tithonian age) in what is now Uintah County, Utah. It is known from the middle of the Brushy Basin Member, Morrison Formation. The genus was named by Andrew T. McDonald in 2011 and the type species is U. aphanoecetes.[1]

History

The holotype specimen, CM 11337 (a virtually complete skeleton minus the skull and tail), was assigned to Camptosaurus medius (Marsh, 1894[2]) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1925.[3] When C. medius was synonymised with Camptosaurus dispar in 1980,[4] the holotype was seen to probably represent a new, then unnamed, species of Camptosaurus.[5] The species Camptosaurus aphanoecetes was first described in 2008 by Carpenter and Wilson.[6] In 2011, it was assigned to the new genus Uteodon.[1] In 2015, the Uteodon braincase was referred to Dryosaurus, and Uteodon and Cumnoria were synonymized with Camptosaurus, as C. aphanoectes and C. prestwichii, respectively.[7]

Description

Size comparison based on Hartman (2013)[8]

Based on the holotype and the related genus Camptosaurus, when fully grown, Uteodon would have grown up to around 6 metres (20 ft) long and would probably have weighed no more than around 400 kilograms (880 lb),[4][1] although according to Hartman (2013), Uteodon could have been as small as around 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) long.[8]

Paleoecology

Provenance and occurrence

The single known specimen of Uteodon, CM 11337, was found in the Dry Mesa Quarry/Douglass Quarry of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation, Utah.[3] The rocks it was found in were medium-grained, coarse sandstone that was deposited during the Tithonian and Kimmeridgian stages of the Late Jurassic period, approximately 153 to 148 million years ago.[9]

Fauna and habitat

Life restoration of Uteodon

Studies suggest that the paleoenvironment of this section of the Morrison Formation included rivers that flowed from the west into a basin that contained a giant, saline alkaline lake and there were extensive wetlands in the vicinity. The Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry of western Colorado yields one of the most diverse Upper Jurassic vertebrate assemblages in the world.[10] The Dry Mesa Quarry has produced the remains of the sauropods Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Barosaurus, Supersaurus, and Camarasaurus, the iguanodonts Camptosaurus and Dryosaurus, and the theropods Allosaurus, Torvosaurus. Tanycolagreus, Koparion, Stokesosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Ornitholestes, as well as Nanosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus, and Stegosaurus.[11]

The flora of the period has been revealed by fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, ferns, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers. Animal fossils discovered include bivalves, snails, ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, amphibians, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial (like Hoplosuchus) and aquatic crocodylomorphs, cotylosaurs, several species of pterosaurs like Harpactognathus, and early mammals, multituberculates, symmetrodonts, and triconodonts.[11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Andrew T. McDonald (2011). "The taxonomy of species assigned to Camptosaurus (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda)" (PDF). Zootaxa. 2783: 52–68. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.2783.1.4.
  2. ↑ Marsh, O, C. (1894). The typical Ornithopoda of the American Jurassic. American Journal of Science, 48, 85–90.
  3. 1 2 Gilmore, C.W. (1925). "Osteology of ornithopodous dinosaurs from the Dinosaur National Monument, Utah". Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum. 10: 385–410.
  4. 1 2 G.S. Paul (2010) "The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs". (Page 284).
  5. ↑ Dodson, P. (1980). Comparative osteology of the American ornithopods Camptosaurus and Tenontosaurus. Mémoires de la Société géologique de France 139:81–85.
  6. ↑ Carpenter, K.; Wilson, Y. (2008). "A New Species of Camptosaurus (Ornithopoda: Dinosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and a Biomechanical Analysis of Its Forelimb". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 76 (4): 227. doi:10.2992/0097-4463(2008)76[227:ANSOCO]2.0.CO;2.
  7. ↑ Carpenter, Kenneth; Lamanna, Matthew C. (2015). "The Braincase Assigned to the Ornithopod Dinosaur Uteodon McDonald, 2011, Reassigned to Dryosaurus Marsh, 1894: Implications for Iguanodontian Morphology and Taxonomy". Annals of Carnegie Museum. 83 (2): 149–165. doi:10.2992/007.083.0201. ISSN 0097-4463.
  8. 1 2 "Uteodon skeletal reconstruction (2013)". Dr. Scott Hartman's Skeletal Drawing. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
  9. ↑ Jensen, J. A. and Ostrom, J. H. (1977). A second Jurassic pterosaur from North America. Journal of Paleontology 51(4):867–870
  10. ↑ Richmond, D.R. and Morris, T.H., (1999), Stratigraphy and cataclysmic deposition of the Dry Mesa Dinosaur Quarry, Mesa County, Colorado, in Carpenter, K., Kirkland, J., and Chure, D., eds., The Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation: An Interdisciplinary Study, Modern Geology v. 22, no. 1-4, pp. 121–143.
  11. 1 2 Chure, Daniel J.; Litwin, Ron; Hasiotis, Stephen T.; Evanoff, Emmett; Carpenter, Kenneth (2006). "The fauna and flora of the Morrison Formation: 2006". In Foster, John R.; Lucas, Spencer G. (eds.). Paleontology and Geology of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, 36. Albuquerque, New Mexico: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. pp. 233–248.
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