CAMPOSAURUS
a coelophysid theropod dinosaur from the Late Triassic of North America.
Pronunciation: CAM-po-SOR-us
Meaning: Camp's lizard
Author/s: Hunt
et al. (
1998)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Arizona, USA
Discovery Chart Position: #421
Camposaurus arizonensis
(Camp's Lizard from Arizona)Etymology
Camposaurus is derived from "Camp" (for American vertebrate palaeontologist Charles Lewis Camp—1893-1975), and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
arizonensis (ayr-i-zoh-NEN-sis), means "from Arizona" in Latin.
Discovery
The fossils of
Camposaurus were discovered in the Mesa Redondo Member of the Chinle Formation at Placerias quarry, Apache County, Arizona, USA, by a UCMP party, under the direction of S.P. Welles, in 1934.
The
holotype (UCMP 34498) consists of the bottom ends of both shins and calves, fused to ankle and heel bones.
Hunt
et al. (1998) referred several disarticulated and disassociated fossils from the same quarry to
Camposaurus as paratypes, based on nothing more than the laws of probability. However, a badly weathered thigh (UCMP 139622), back vertebrae (UCMP 177317, MNA V3091, incorrectly listed as V2777 by Long and Murray in 1995), hip vertebrae (UCMP 138591, 178047, 178048, 178049), and the bottom end of a left shin (UCMP 25793) are either none diognostic, non-referrable due to a lack of compareable parts, or not classifiable as anything more specific than indeterminate saurischians or archosaurs.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Triassic
Stage: Norian
Age range: 220 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Carnivore
References
• Long RA and Murray PA (1995) "Late Triassic (Carnian and Norian) tetrapods from the Southwestern United States".
New Mexico Museum of Natural History Bulletins, 4: 1-254.
• Hunt AP, Lucas SG, Heckert AB, Sullivan RM and Lockley MG (1998) "Late Triassic dinosaurs from the western United States".
Géobios, 31(4): 511-531.
• Weishampel DB, Dodson P and Osmólska H (2004) "
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Nesbitt SJ, Irmis RB and Parker WG (2007) "A critical re-evaluation of the Late Triassic dinosaur taxa of North America".
Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 5(2), 209–243.
• Ezcurra MD and SL Brusatte (2011) "Taxonomic and phylogenetic reassessment of the early neotheropod dinosaur
Camposaurus arizonensis from the Late Triassic of North America".
Palaeontology, 54(4): 763-772. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01069.x.
• Ezcurra MD (2017) "A new Early Coelophysoid neotheropod from the Late Triassic of northwestern Argentina".
Ameghiniana, 54: 506–538.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
CAMPOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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