MUTTABURRASAURUS
a plant-eating ornithopod dinosaur, maybe a rhabdodontid, from the Early Cretaceous of Australia.
Pronunciation: muht-a-BUHR-a-SOR-us
Meaning: Muttaburra lizard
Author/s: Bartholomai and Molnar (
1981)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Queensland, Australia
Discovery Chart Position: #290
Muttaburrasaurus langdoni
(Langdon's Muttaburra lizard)Etymology
Muttaburrasaurus is derived from "Muttaburra" (the Queensland township where its first fossils were found) and the Greek "saurus" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
langdoni, honors paleontologist Doug Langdon.
Discovery
The first fossils of
Muttaburrasaurus were discovered in the
Mackunda Formation at Rosebury Downs Station beside Thompson River, near Muttaburra, Queensland, Australia, by Doug Langdon in 1963.
The
holotype (QM F6140) partial skeleton with skull and lower jaws.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Early Cretaceous
Stage: Albian
Age range: 112-110 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 8 meters
Est. max. hip height: 2.5 meters
Est. max. weight: 3 tons
Diet: Herbivore
Muttaburrasaurus
langdoni
References
• Bartholomai A and Molnar RE (1981) "
Muttaburrasaurus: a new Iguanodontid (Ornithischia: Ornithopoda) dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Queensland".
Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 20(2): 319-349.
• Molnar RE (1995) "Possible convergence in the jaw mechanisms of ceratopians and
Muttaburrasaurus".
Page 115-117 in Sun and Wang (eds) "Sixth Symposium on Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biota, short papers". China Ocean Press, Beijing.
• Molnar RE (1996) "
Observations on the Australian ornithopod dinosaur, Muttaburrasaurus".
Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 39(3): 639-652. Brisbane.
• Paul GS (2010) "
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs".
• Agnolin FL, Ezcurra MD, Pais DF and Salisbury SW (2010) "
A reappraisal of the Cretaceous non-avian dinosaur faunas from Australia and New Zealand: evidence for their Gondwanan affinities".
Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 8(2): 257-300.
• Romilio and Salisbury SW (2011) "A reassessment of large theropod dinosaur tracks from the mid-Cretaceous (late
Albian-Cenomanian) Winton Formation of Lark Quarry, central-western
Queensland, Australia: A case for mistaken identity".
Cretaceous Research, 32(2): 135-142
• White MA, Cook AG and Rumbold SJ (2017) "
A methodology of theropod print replication utilising the pedal reconstruction of Australovenator and a simulated paleo-sediment".
PeerJ 5:e3427. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3427.
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Atkinson, L.
"
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