''Moabosaurus'' (meaning "

Moab Moab () was an ancient Levant, Levantine kingdom whose territory is today located in southern Jordan. The land is mountainous and lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by ...

reptile") is a genus of

turiasauria Turiasauria is an unranked clade of eusauropod dinosaurs known from Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous deposits in Europe, North America, and Africa. Description Turiasauria was originally erected by Royo-Torres et al. (2006) to include '' Tur ...

sauropod Sauropoda (), whose members are known as sauropods (; from '' sauro-'' + '' -pod'', 'lizard-footed'), is a clade of saurischian ('lizard-hipped') dinosaurs. Sauropods had very long necks, long tails, small heads (relative to the rest of their b ...

dinosaur from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous (geochronology, geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphy, chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 143.1 ...

Cedar Mountain Formation The Cedar Mountain Formation is the name given to a distinctive sedimentary geologic formation in eastern Utah, spanning most of the early and mid-Cretaceous. The formation was named for Cedar Mountain (Utah), Cedar Mountain in northern Emery Cou ...

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Description

''Moabosaurus'' is characterized by a suite of features including: extremely low neural spines that are thin, transverse ridges in the posterior cervical vertebrae and anterior dorsal vertebrae; strongly procoelous proximal and distal caudal vertebrae; and an ulna with well-developed lateral and medial anteroproximal ridges combined with a large olecranon process. According to the 2017 article which officially named and described ''Moabosaurus'', the animal was said to reach 10 meters (32.8 feet) long. However, the specimens which were examined belonged to juveniles and sub-adults, so it's possible that the creature measured longer when fully-grown.

Discovery and naming

''Moabosaurus'' was collected from the Dalton Wells Quarry, which is about 20 km northwest of

Moab, Utah Moab () is the largest city in and the county seat of Grand County in eastern Utah in the western United States, known for its dramatic scenery. The population was 5,366 at the 2020 census. Moab attracts many tourists annually, mostly visitor ...

. Between 1975 and 2005, the quarry produced parts of at least 18 individuals of ''Moabosaurus'' based on the number of braincases present, totalling over 5,500 bones. Many of the recovered bones are fragmentary due to intense trampling as evidenced by breakage and trample scratches.Britt, B.B., Eberth, D.A., Scheetz, R.D., Greenhalgh, B.W., Stadtman, K.L., 2009. Taphonomy of debris-flow hosted dinosaur bonebeds at Dalton Wells, Utah (Lower Cretaceous, Cedar Mountain Formation, USA). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 280(1-2):1-22. Another factor that degraded the bones before burial was consumption by insects. Insects, probably beetle larvae, consumed portions of the bones that were in contact with the ground, as evidenced by burrows and mandible marks. Later, the bones were transported a short distance by a stream and buried in sediments reworked from the underlying Morrison Formation.Eberth, D.A., Britt, B.B., Scheetz, R.D., Stadtman, K.L., and Brinkman, D.B., 2006. Dalton Wells: Geology and significance of debris-flow-hosted dinosaur bonebeds (Cedar Mountain Formation, eastern Utah, USA). Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, Palaeoclimatology, 236:217-245. Detrital zircon crystals from the Dalton Wells Quarry yield an age of 125 million years, indicating ''Moabosaurus'' is

Aptian The Aptian is an age (geology), age in the geologic timescale or a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early Cretaceous, Early or Lower Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or series (stratigraphy), S ...

in age. Brooks B. Britt, Rodney D. Scheets, Michael F. Whiting, and D. Ray Wilhite named Moabosaurus utahensis.

Classification

Phylogenetic analyses in the describing article in 2017 indicated that ''Moabosaurus'' is a basal titanosauriform macronarian neosauropod. Unlike other titanosauriform sauropods it has thick-walled vertebrae with large pneumatic chambers (camerate-grade) as in basal macronarians and large, spatulate teeth, as in ''

Camarasaurus ''Camarasaurus'' ( ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Its fossil remains have been found in the Morrison Formation, dating to the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages of the Jurassic, betwe ...

''. However, a second study which was made in 2017 placed it in the

Turiasauria Turiasauria is an unranked clade of eusauropod dinosaurs known from Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous deposits in Europe, North America, and Africa. Description Turiasauria was originally erected by Royo-Torres et al. (2006) to include '' Tur ...

, thus outside of the

Neosauropoda Neosauropoda is a clade within Dinosauria, coined in 1986 by Argentina, Argentine paleontologist José Bonaparte and currently described as ''Saltasaurus loricatus'', ''Diplodocus longus'', and all animals directly descended from their most recent ...

. With '' Turiasaurus'' it shares derived features of the braincase; bifurcated cervical (neck) ribs; extremely low neural spines on the cervical and anterior dorsal vertebrae; and strongly procoelous proximal caudal vertebrae.

Paleoecology

The Dalton Wells quarry has also yielded specimens of '' Venenosaurus'' (a brachiosaurid sauropod), the theropod dinosaurs ''

Utahraptor ''Utahraptor'' (meaning "Utah's predator") is a genus of large dromaeosaurid (a group of feathered carnivorous theropods) dinosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous period from around 139 to 135 million years ago in what is now the United ...

'' and '' Nedcolbertia'', plus a tall-spined

iguanodontia Ornithopoda () is a clade of ornithischian dinosaurs, called ornithopods (). They represent one of the most successful groups of herbivorous dinosaurs during the Cretaceous. The most primitive members of the group were bipedal and relatively sm ...

n, and the ankylosaurian '' Gastonia''. Non-dinosaurian taxa are rare at the quarry and are limited to fragments of a

pterosaur Pterosaurs are an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 million to 66 million years ago). Pterosaurs are the earli ...

crocodilia Crocodilia () is an order of semiaquatic, predatory reptiles that are known as crocodilians. They first appeared during the Late Cretaceous and are the closest living relatives of birds. Crocodilians are a type of crocodylomorph pseudosuchia ...

turtle Turtles are reptiles of the order (biology), order Testudines, characterized by a special turtle shell, shell developed mainly from their ribs. Modern turtles are divided into two major groups, the Pleurodira (side necked turtles) and Crypt ...

, and a

neochoristodere Neochoristodera is a lineage of specialised crocodile-like fully aquatic choristodere reptiles. Noted for their long jaws and large size, these animals were predominant across the Northern Hemisphere, occurring in freshwater and coastal environme ...

.Britt, B.B., R. D. Scheetz, D. B. Brinkman, and D. A. Eberth. 2006. A Barremian neochoristodere from the Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah, USA. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26(4): 1005-1008.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q6886334 Turiasauria Dinosaur genera Aptian dinosaurs Cedar Mountain Formation Fossil taxa described in 2017 Dinosaurs of the United States

Description

Discovery and naming

Classification

Paleoecology

See also

References