Chilesaurus

Chilesaurus
Temporal range: Late Jurassic
~145 Ma
Cast of the holotype skeleton
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Genus: Chilesaurus
Novas et al. 2015
Species:
C. diegosuarezi
Binomial name
Chilesaurus diegosuarezi
Novas et al. 2015

Chilesaurus is an extinct genus of herbivorous dinosaur. The type and only known species so far is Chilesaurus diegosuarezi.[1] Chilesaurus lived between 148-147 million years ago (Mya) in the Late Jurassic period of Chile.[2] Showing a combination of traits from theropods, ornithischians, and sauropodomorphs, this genus has far-reaching implications for the evolution of dinosaurs, such as whether the traditional saurischian-ornithischian split is superior or inferior to the proposed group Ornithoscelida.[3]

  1. ^ Novas, F. E.; Salgado, L.; Suárez, M.; Agnolín, F. L.; Ezcurra, M. N. D.; Chimento, N. S. R.; de la Cruz, R.; Isasi, M. P.; Vargas, A. O.; Rubilar-Rogers, D. (2015). "An enigmatic plant-eating theropod from the Late Jurassic period of Chile". Nature. 522 (7556): 331–334. doi:10.1038/nature14307. PMID 25915021.
  2. ^ Suárez, Manuel; De La Cruz, Rita; Fanning, Mark; Novas, Fernando; Salgado, Leonardo (2015-12-28). "Tithonian age of dinosaur fossils in central Patagonian, Chile: U–Pb SHRIMP geochronology". International Journal of Earth Sciences. 105 (8): 2273–2284. doi:10.1007/s00531-015-1287-7. ISSN 1437-3254.
  3. ^ Baron, Matthew G.; Barrett, Paul M. (2018-03-01). "Support for the placement of Chilesaurus within Ornithischia: a reply to Müller et al". Biology Letters. 14 (3): 20180002. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2018.0002. ISSN 1744-9561. PMC 5897612. PMID 29593075.