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A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China
The early evolutionary history of the armored dinosaurs (Thyreophora) is obscured by their patchily distributed fossil record and by conflicting views on the relationships of Early Jurassic taxa. Here, we describe an early diverging thyreophoran from the Lower Jurassic Fengjiahe Formation of Yunnan...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8929930/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35289749 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75248 |
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author | Yao, Xi Barrett, Paul M Yang, Lei Xu, Xing Bi, Shundong |
author_facet | Yao, Xi Barrett, Paul M Yang, Lei Xu, Xing Bi, Shundong |
author_sort | Yao, Xi |
collection | PubMed |
description | The early evolutionary history of the armored dinosaurs (Thyreophora) is obscured by their patchily distributed fossil record and by conflicting views on the relationships of Early Jurassic taxa. Here, we describe an early diverging thyreophoran from the Lower Jurassic Fengjiahe Formation of Yunnan Province, China, on the basis of an associated partial skeleton that includes skull, axial, limb, and armor elements. It can be diagnosed as a new taxon based on numerous cranial and postcranial autapomorphies and is further distinguished from all other thyreophorans by a unique combination of character states. Although the robust postcranium is similar to that of more deeply nested ankylosaurs and stegosaurs, phylogenetic analysis recovers it as either the sister taxon of Emausaurus or of the clade Scelidosaurus+ Eurypoda. This new taxon, Yuxisaurus kopchicki, represents the first valid thyreophoran dinosaur to be described from the Early Jurassic of Asia and confirms the rapid geographic spread and diversification of the clade after its first appearance in the Hettangian. Its heavy build and distinctive armor also hint at previously unrealized morphological diversity early in the clade’s history. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8929930 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89299302022-03-18 A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China Yao, Xi Barrett, Paul M Yang, Lei Xu, Xing Bi, Shundong eLife Ecology The early evolutionary history of the armored dinosaurs (Thyreophora) is obscured by their patchily distributed fossil record and by conflicting views on the relationships of Early Jurassic taxa. Here, we describe an early diverging thyreophoran from the Lower Jurassic Fengjiahe Formation of Yunnan Province, China, on the basis of an associated partial skeleton that includes skull, axial, limb, and armor elements. It can be diagnosed as a new taxon based on numerous cranial and postcranial autapomorphies and is further distinguished from all other thyreophorans by a unique combination of character states. Although the robust postcranium is similar to that of more deeply nested ankylosaurs and stegosaurs, phylogenetic analysis recovers it as either the sister taxon of Emausaurus or of the clade Scelidosaurus+ Eurypoda. This new taxon, Yuxisaurus kopchicki, represents the first valid thyreophoran dinosaur to be described from the Early Jurassic of Asia and confirms the rapid geographic spread and diversification of the clade after its first appearance in the Hettangian. Its heavy build and distinctive armor also hint at previously unrealized morphological diversity early in the clade’s history. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2022-03-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8929930/ /pubmed/35289749 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75248 Text en © 2022, Yao et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Ecology Yao, Xi Barrett, Paul M Yang, Lei Xu, Xing Bi, Shundong A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title | A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title_full | A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title_fullStr | A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title_full_unstemmed | A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title_short | A new early branching armored dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic of southwestern China |
title_sort | new early branching armored dinosaur from the lower jurassic of southwestern china |
topic | Ecology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8929930/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35289749 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.75248 |
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