Batyrosaurus
Name:
Batyrosaurus
(Batyr lizard).
Phonetic: Bat-e-r-o-sore-us.
Named By: Pascal Godefroit, François Escuillié,
Yuri L. Bolotsky & Pascaline Lauters - 2012.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Ornithopoda, Hadrosauroidea.
Species: B. rozhdestvenskyi
(type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: About 5 to 6 meters long.
Known locations: Kazakhstan - Bostobinskaya
Formation.
Time period: Santonian/Campanian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial skull and post
cranial skeleton.
Batyrosaurus
has been described as a basal hadrosauroid,
the group of ornithopod
dinosaurs that would give rise to the more derived hadrosaurids such as
Edmontosaurus
and Saurolophus
towards the late Cretaceous. Compared
to other hadrosauroids, the describers considered Batyrosaurus
to be
more advanced than Altirhinus,
but more primitive than
Probactrosaurus.
In
life Batyrosaurus would have been a primarily
quadrupedal dinosaur,
though one that had the option of rearing up on just its hind legs in
order to reach taller plants. Batyrosaurus is
known to have had a
four centimetre long thumb claw, a feature that was common on
iguanodont ornithopods such as Iguanodon
that earlier in the Mesozoic
gave rise to hadrosauroids like Batyrosaurus.
Casts of the braincase
of Batyrosaurus also reveal arterial impression on
the bone that were
left behind by arteries that were supplying the brain with oxygenated
blood in life. This in turn indicates that the braincase of
Batyrosaurus was only just large enough to
accommodate the mass of the
brain. Predatory threats to Batyrosaurus would
have likely come from
tyrannosaurs
of the time, though dromaeosaurs
would have also been a
serious problem for smaller individuals and juveniles.
There
has been speculation that Batyrosaurus may actually
be the same as
Arstanosaurus, another dinosaur known from the
same location.
Arstanosaurus however has had a troubled taxonomic
history, being
considered to have been a hadrosaurid, ceratopsian
and even a fossil
chimaera (remains of two or more animals described as one).
Because of the doubtful credibility of Arstanosaurus
as a genus, the
describers of the genus chose not to include the Batyrosaurus
fossils
with it.
Batyrosaurus
was named after the Batyr, Kazakh heroic warriors. The type species
name is in honour of the Russian palaeontologist Anatoly
Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky.
Further reading
- A New Basal Hadrosauroid Dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of
Kazakhstan. In Godefroit, P. (eds). - Pascal Godefroit,
François Escuillié, Yuri L. Bolotsky & Pascaline
Lauters - 2012.
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