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Megalosaurids
Megalosauridae is a monophyletic family of carnivorous theropod dinosaurs within the group Megalosauroidea. Appearing in the Middle Jurassic, megalosaurids were among the first major radiation of large theropod dinosaurs. They were a relatively primitive group of basal tetanurans containing two main subfamilies, Megalosaurinae and Afrovenatorinae, along with the basal genus ''Eustreptospondylus'', an unresolved taxon which differs from both subfamilies. The defining megalosaurid, ''Megalosaurus bucklandii'', was first named and described in 1824 by William Buckland after multiple finds in Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, UK. ''Megalosaurus'' was the first formally described dinosaur and was the basis for the establishment of the clade Dinosauria. It is also one of the largest known Middle Jurassic carnivorous dinosaurs, with the best-preserved femur at 805 mm and a proposed body mass of around 943 kg. Megalosauridae has mainly been recognized as a European group of dinosaurs, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duriavenator
''Duriavenator'' is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now England during the Middle Jurassic, about 168 million years ago. In 1882, upper and lower jaw bones of a dinosaur were collected near Sherborne in Dorset, and Richard Owen considered the fossils to belong to the species ''Megalosaurus, Megalosaurus bucklandii'', the first named non-bird dinosaur. By 1964, the specimen was recognised as belonging to a different species, and in 1974 it was described as a new species of ''Megalosaurus'', ''M. hesperis''; the Specific name (zoology), specific name means 'the West' or 'western'. Later researchers questioned whether the species belonged to ''Megalosaurus'', in which many fragmentary theropods from around the world had historically been placed. After examining the taxonomic issues surrounding ''Megalosaurus'', Roger B. J. Benson moved ''M. hesperis'' to its own genus in 2008, ''Duriavenator''; this name means "Dorset hunter". Estimated to have been long and wei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megalosaurus Bucklandii
''Megalosaurus'' (meaning "great lizard", from Ancient Greek, Greek , ', meaning 'big', 'tall' or 'great' and , ', meaning 'lizard') is an extinct genus of large carnivorous theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic Epoch (Bathonian stage, 166 million years ago) of southern England. Although fossils from other areas have been assigned to the genus, the only certain remains of ''Megalosaurus'' come from Oxfordshire and date to the late Middle Jurassic. The earliest remains of ''Megalosaurus'' were described in the 17th century, and were initially interpreted as the remains of elephants or giants. ''Megalosaurus'' was named in 1824 by William Buckland, becoming the first genus of (non-avian) dinosaur to be validly named. The type species is ''M. bucklandii'', named in 1827 by Gideon Mantell, after Buckland. In 1842, ''Megalosaurus'' was one of three genera on which Richard Owen based his Dinosauria, along with ''Iguanodon'' and ''Hylaeosaurus''. On Owen's directions a model was ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Megalosauroidea
Megalosauroidea (meaning 'great/big lizard forms') is a superfamily (or clade) of tetanuran theropod dinosaurs that lived from the Middle Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period. The group is defined as '' Megalosaurus bucklandii'' and all taxa sharing a more recent common ancestor with it than with '' Allosaurus fragilis'' or '' Passer domesticus''. Members of the group include ''Spinosaurus'', ''Megalosaurus'', and '' Torvosaurus''. They are possibly paraphyletic in nature with respect to Allosauroidea, which is to say some members of this superfamily might be closer to Allosauroids than to each other, which is undesirable in cladistics. Classification The name Spinosauroidea is sometimes used in place of Megalosauroidea. The superfamily Spinosauroidea was named in 1915 by Ernst Stromer. It is a synonym of Megalosauroidea in almost all modern phylogenetic analyses, and it is therefore redundant. Spinosauroidea was defined as a clade in 1998 by Paul Sereno as the node clade c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torvosaurus
''Torvosaurus'' () is a genus of large Megalosaurinae, megalosaurine Theropoda, theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 165 to 148 million years ago during the Callovian to Tithonian ages of the late Middle Jurassic, Middle and Late Jurassic period in what is now Colorado, Portugal, Germany, and possibly England, Spain, Tanzania, and Uruguay. It contains two currently recognized species, ''Torvosaurus tanneri'' and ''Torvosaurus gurneyi'', plus a third unnamed species from Germany. In 1979, the type species ''Torvosaurus tanneri'' was named. Measuring around long and weighing approximately , ''T. tanneri'' was among the largest terrestrial carnivores in North America during the Late Jurassic. Specimens of ''Torvosaurus gurneyi'' were measured up to in length and in body mass, suggesting that it was much larger than ''T. tanneri'' and was the largest terrestrial carnivore in Europe during the Late Jurassic. Based on bone morphology, ''Torvosaurus'' is thought to have had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dubreuillosaurus
''Dubreuillosaurus'' is a genus of carnivorous dinosaur from the middle Jurassic Period. It is a megalosaurid theropod. Its fossils were found in France. The only named species, ''Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis'', was originally described as a species of '' Poekilopleuron'', ''Poekilopleuron? valesdunensis'', which is still formally the type species of the genus. It was later renamed ''Dubreuillosaurus valesdunensis'' when, in 2005, Allain came to the conclusion that it was not part of the genus ''Poekilopleuron''. Its type specimen, MNHN 1998-13, is only rivalled in the number of preserved elements in this group by that of '' Eustreptospondylus''. ''Dubreuillosaurus'' is considered to a sister taxon of '' Magnosaurus''. It did not show signs of insular dwarfism even though it was uncovered on an island. Discovery and naming In 1994, the mayor of Conteville in Normandy, André Dubreuil, noted that during land rehabilitation of the old quarry of ''Pierre de Caen'', dinosaur bone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tetanurae
Tetanurae (/ˌtɛtəˈnjuːriː/ or "stiff tails") is a clade that includes most Theropoda, theropod dinosaurs, including Megalosauroidea, megalosauroids, Allosauroidea, allosauroids, and Coelurosauria, coelurosaurs (which includes Tyrannosauroidea, tyrannosauroids, Ornithomimosauria, ornithomimosaurs, Compsognathidae, compsognathids and maniraptorans, the latter including living birds). Tetanurans are defined as all theropods more closely related to modern birds than to ''Ceratosaurus'' and contain the majority of predatory dinosaur diversity. Tetanurae likely diverged from its sister group, Ceratosauria, during the late Triassic. Tetanurae first appeared in the fossil record by the Early Jurassic about 190 mya and by the Middle Jurassic had become globally distributed. The group was named by Jacques Gauthier in 1986 and originally had two main subgroups: Carnosauria and Coelurosauria, the clade containing birds and related dinosaurs such as compsognathids, tyrannosaurids, ornit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monophyletic
In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population), i.e. excludes non-descendants of that common ancestor # the grouping contains all the descendants of that common ancestor, without exception Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A ''paraphyletic'' grouping meets 1. but not 2., thus consisting of the descendants of a common ancestor, excepting one or more monophyletic subgroups. A '' polyphyletic'' grouping meets neither criterion, and instead serves to characterize convergent relationships of biological features rather than genetic relationships – for example, night-active primates, fruit trees, or aquatic insects. As such, these characteristic features of a polyphyletic grouping ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Family (taxonomy)
Family (, : ) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". The delineation of what constitutes a family—or whether a described family should be acknowledged—is established and decided upon by active taxonomists. There are not strict regulations for outlining or acknowledging a family, yet in the realm of plants, these classifications often rely on both the vegetative and reproductive characteristics of plant species. Taxonomists frequently hold varying perspectives on these descriptions, leading to a lack of widespread consensus within the scientific community fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carnivore
A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ... whose nutrition and energy requirements are met by eating, consumption of animal tissue (biology), tissues (mainly muscle, adipose tissue, fat and other soft tissues) as food, whether through predation or scavenger, scavenging. Nomenclature Mammal order The technical term for mammals in the order (biology), order Carnivora is ''carnivoran'', and they are so-named because most member species in the group have a carnivorous diet, but the similarity of the name of the order and the name of the diet causes confusion. Many but not all carnivorans are meat eaters; a few, such as the fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theropod
Theropoda (; from ancient Greek , (''therion'') "wild beast"; , (''pous, podos'') "foot"">wiktionary:ποδός"> (''pous, podos'') "foot" is one of the three major groups (clades) of dinosaurs, alongside Ornithischia and Sauropodomorpha. Theropods, both extant and extinct, are characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. They are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs, placing them closer to sauropodomorphs than to ornithischians. They were ancestrally carnivorous, although a number of theropod groups evolved to become herbivores and omnivores. Members of the subgroup Coelurosauria and possibly some other or all theropods were covered in feathers. In the Jurassic, birds evolved from small specialized coelurosaurian theropods, and are currently represented by about 11,000 living species, making theropods the only group of dinosaurs alive today. Theropods first appeared during the Carnian age of the late Triassic period ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Middle Jurassic
The Middle Jurassic is the second Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period (geology), Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 161.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations containing land animal fossils include the Forest Marble Formation in England, the Kilmaluag Formation in Scotland,British Geological Survey. 2011Stratigraphic framework for the Middle Jurassic strata of Great Britain and the adjoining continental shelf: research report RR/11/06 British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham. the Calcaire de Caen of France, the Daohugou Beds in China, the Itat Formation in Russia, the Tiouraren Formation of Niger, and the Isalo III Formation of western Madagascar. Rocks of the Middle Jurassic were formerly (until about 1980s) in Europe called ''Dogger'' or ''Brown Jurassic''. Paleogeography During the Middle Jurassic Epoch, Pangaea began to separate into Laurasia and Gond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
