Publication Date:
2009-03-20
Description:
Ornithischia is one of the two major groups of dinosaurs, with heterodontosauridae as one of its major clades. Heterodontosauridae is characterized by small, gracile bodies and a problematic phylogenetic position. Recent phylogenetic work indicates that it represents the most basal group of all well-known ornithischians. Previous heterodontosaurid records are mainly from the Early Jurassic period (205-190 million years ago) of Africa. Here we report a new heterodontosaurid, Tianyulong confuciusi gen. et sp. nov., from the Early Cretaceous period (144-99 million years ago) of western Liaoning Province, China. Tianyulong extends the geographical distribution of heterodontosaurids to Asia and confirms the clade's previously questionable temporal range extension into the Early Cretaceous period. More surprisingly, Tianyulong bears long, singular and unbranched filamentous integumentary (outer skin) structures. This represents the first confirmed report, to our knowledge, of filamentous integumentary structures in an ornithischian dinosaur.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zheng, Xiao-Ting -- You, Hai-Lu -- Xu, Xing -- Dong, Zhi-Ming -- England -- Nature. 2009 Mar 19;458(7236):333-6. doi: 10.1038/nature07856.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, Lianhuashan Road West, Pingyi, Shandong, 273300, China.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19295609" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
China
;
Dentition
;
Dinosaurs/*anatomy & histology/*classification
;
Feathers/anatomy & histology
;
Fossils
;
History, Ancient
;
Integumentary System/*anatomy & histology
;
Phylogeny
;
Skin/anatomy & histology
;
Skull/anatomy & histology
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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