SZECHUANOSAURUS
a meat-eating tetanuran theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of China.
Pronunciation: SUH-SHWAHN-o-SOR-us
Meaning: Szechuan lizard
Author/s: Young (
1942)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Sichuan, China
Discovery Chart Position: #183
Szechuanosaurus campi
To say the Szechuan lizard has a peppery past would be an understatement. The name was coined for a small handful of teeth found strewn around the Guangyuan Group in 1942, but numerous other specimens were assigned to it with gay abandon during the following decades and all attempts to bring order from chaos just brought more chaos. First Young, then Rozhdestvensky, Dong, Gao and Chure all stuck their thumbs in the proverbial pie, but after a 2012 clean up job by Matt Carrano and chums all that is left of Szechuanosaurus are the original teeth, and only because they're too rubbish to move elsewhere.
Etymology
Szechuanosaurus is derived from "Szechuan" (a Romanization of "Sichuan", for postal purposes) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard), named for Sichuan Province where the fossil was found. Sichuan means "four rivers", from the Chinese "si" and "chuan".
The
species epithet,
campi, honours American paleontologist Charles Lewis Camp, who found a very fragmentary specimen (UCMP 32102) in Szechuan in 1935 that Young assigned to
Szechuanosaurus in 1942.
Discovery
The remains of
Szechuanosaurus were discovered in the Guangyuan (aka Kuangyuan or Kyangyan) Group, Guangyuan County, Sichuan Province, China, by Yang Zhongjian, aka C.C. (Chung Chien) Young, in 1942.
The
holotype (V235, V236, V238, V239) is four teeth.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Jurassic
Stage: Oxfordian
Age range: 162-155 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 8 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 650 Kg
Diet: Carnivore
References
• Camp CL (1935) "Dinosaur remains from the Province of Szechuan".
Bulletin of the Department of Geology of the Univiversity of California, 23: 467-471.
• Young CC (1942) "Fossil vertebrates from Kuangyuan, N. Szechuan, China".
Bulletin of the Geological Society of China, 22(3-4): 293-309.
• Dong Z, Zhou S and Zhang Y (1983) "
Dinosaurs from the Jurassic of Sichuan".
Palaeontologica Sinica, New Series C. 162(23): 1-136
• Holtz TR, Molnar RE and Currie PJ (2004) "Basal Tetanurae" in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska (eds.) "
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Gao Y (1998) "
A new species of Middle Jurassic Carnosauria from Dashanpu,
Zigong, Sichaun Province, Szechuanosaurus zigongensis sp. nov".
Vertebrata PalAsiatica, 31(4): 308-314.
• Gao Y (1993) "
A new species of Szechuanosaurus from the Middle Jurassic of Dashanpu, Zigong, Sichuan".
Vertebrata PalAsiatica, 31(4): 308-314.
• Carrano MT, Benson RBJ and Sampson SD (2012) "The phylogeny of Tetanurae (Dinosauria: Theropoda)".
Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 10(2): 211-300. DOI: 10.1080/14772019.2011.630927.
• Yang C, Liu J and Zhang Y (2021) "The humeral diaphyseal histology and its biometric significance of Jurassic
Szechuanosaurus campi (Theropoda, Megalosauridae) in Guangyuan City, Sichuan Province".
Acta Geologica Sinica, 95(8): 2318-2332 (Chinese edition)
DOI: 10.19762/j.cnki.dizhixuebao.2021252.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
SZECHUANOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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