Abydosaurus
Name:
Abydosaurus
(Abydos lizard).
Phonetic: Ah-bee-dos-sore-us.
Named By: Daniel Chure, Brooks Britt, John A.
Whitlock & Jeffrey A. Wilson - 2010.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Sauropoda, Titanosauriformes,
Brachiosauridae.
Species: A. mcintoshi
(type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Uncertain due to lack of remains, see main
text for more detail.
Known locations: USA, Utah - Cedar Mountain
Formation, Mussentuchit Member.
Time period: Albian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Skulls and partial post
cranial remains of several juvenile individuals. Holotype (DINO
16488) is of a complete skull and lower jaws with the first four
cervical (neck) vertebrae.
Abydosaurus
is the first early Cretaceous era sauropod
from the USA to have an
identifiable skull. This skull and other post cranial elements
confirm its identity as a brachiosaurid sauropod, though one with
unusually thin teeth for its kind. Remains of at least four
individuals of Abydosaurus have been recovered and
it seems that all of
these fossils are from juveniles. Because the specimens found were
not fully grown, and the fact that there is not enough remains to
piece together a complete skeleton, a size estimate remains
impossible to establish with certainty. Out of all the other
brachiosaurid sauropods, Abydosaurus is thought
to be most similar to
Giraffatitian
from North Africa, though subtle differences in teeth,
maxilla and nasal bones mean that there are no doubts that Abydosaurus
is a valid genus.
It
might seem odd to base the name of a dinosaur discovered in North
America after a city in ancient Egypt, but there was a method to the
describing team’s madness. In ancient Egyptian mythology the head
of the god Osiris was said to be kept in a reliquary at Abydos
after he had been cut up by his brother Set. Here the reference to
the head of Osiris is made to the holotype of Abydosaurus
which is just
a skull and four vertebrae. The species name A. mcintoshi
is in
honour of John S. McIntosh, a professor of physics at the Wesleyan
University who made several contirubtions to the study of sauropods and
the Dinosaur National Monument.
So
far Abydosaurus has only been found in the Cedar
Mountain Fomration of
Utah, but this is also home to many other genera of dinosaur. Other
sauropods that Abydosaurus may have shared its
habitat with include
Brontomerus,
Venenosaurus
and Cedarosaurus.
Other plant eaters
include ornithopods like Tenontosaurus,
Zephyrosaurus
and Eolambia
as
well as armoured dinosaurs like Gastonia,
Animantarx
and Cedarpelta
that were also present. Numerous predatory theropods were also
present in the Cedar Mountain Formation, but two in particular may
have been a serious threat to Abydosaurus.
Utahraptor
was an
unusually large dromaeosaurid
that would have had little difficulty in
attacking juvenile Abydosaurus, while the even
bigger
carcharodontosaurid theropod dinosaur
Acrocanthosaurus
was also present in the United
States at the same time as Abydosaurus.
Further reading
- First complete sauropod dinosaur skull from the Cretaceous of the
Americas and the evolution of sauropod dentition, Daniel Chure,
Brooks Britt, John A. Whitlock & Jeffrey A. Wilson
-
2010.
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