Kunbarrasaurus
Name:
Kunbarrasaurus
(shield lizard).
Phonetic: Kun-bah-rah-sor-us.
Named By: Lucy G. Leahey, Ralph E. Molnar,
Kenneth Carpenter, Lawrence M. Witmer & Steven W.
Salisbury - 2015.
Classification: Chordata, Rept5ilia,
Dinosauria, Ornithischia, Thyreophora, Ankylosauria.
Species: K. ieversi (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Holotype skull about 24 centimetres long.
Preserved length of holotype individual roughly estimated at about
1.8 meters long, but this is missing the end of the tail. Total
length of the holotype individual in life probably somewhere between
2-2.5 meters long.
Known locations: Australia, Queensland -
Allaru Mudstone.
Time period: Late Albian/Early Cenomanian of the
Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Almost complete skull and
post cranial skeleton.
With
the holotype remains first discovered in 1989 and later placed
within the genus Minmi
in 1996, new studies in the twenty-first
century revealed these fossils to actually belong to a new genus
distinct from Minmi. This resulted in the 2015
naming of
Kunbarrasaurus, a physically small genus of
ankylosaur
that lived in
Australia around the boundary of the early and late Cretaceous.
The
key physically characteristic that identified Kunbarrasaurus
as a genus
seperate from Minmi is the fact that the top of the
skull is actually
very flat by comparison. In addition to this, Minmi
is regarded as
a primitive member of the ankylosauridae, the group better known as
the club tailed armour plated dinosaurs. The end of the tail of
Kunbarrasaurus is still missing at the time of
writing, but other
features in the skeleton indicate that Kunbarrasaurus
was actually too
primitive in form to be an ankylosaurid, but also possibly not even a
nodosauird, the sister group to the ankylosaurid dinosaurs that
lacked the distinctive club tails. For this reason, Kunbarrasaurus
is currently regarded as a basal member of the Ankylosauria, similar
to but not advanced in physical form enough to be a distinct ankylosaur
or nodosaur.
Gut
contents were also found in the Kunbarrasaurus
holotype and these
confirm that Kunbarrasaurus ate plants, and ate
everything from the
leaves, to the fruits and seeds. The latter of these seem to have
been swallowed whole.
Kunbarrasaurus
would have had its body covered in bony osteoderm armour, and this
would have been the last line of defence against the teeth and claws of
predatory dinosaurs such as Australovenator
that would have been
roaming around Australia at the same time as Kunbarrasaurus.
Further reading
- Cranial osteology of the ankylosaurian dinosaur formerly known as
Minmi sp. (Ornithischia: Thyreophora) from the Lower Cretaceous
Allaru Mudstone of Richmond, Queensland, Australia. - PeerJ
- Lucy G. Leahey, Ralph E. Molnar, Kenneth Carpenter,
Lawrence M. Witmer & Steven W. Salisbury - 2015.
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