Othnielosaurus
Name:
Othnielosaurus
(Othniel’s lizard).
Phonetic: Off-ne-al-o-sore-us.
Named By: P. M. Galton - 2007.
Synonyms: Laosaurus consors.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Genasauria, Neornithischia.
Species: O. consors (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: About 2 meters long.
Known locations: USA - Morrison Formation rocks
in Utah and Wyoming.
Time period: Late Jurassic.
Fossil representation: Several individuals.
Othnielosaurus is a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that seems to have been widespread across Central North America during the late Jurassic. Othnielosaurus would have been a bipedal dinosaur relying more upon speed and agility to stay out of the mouths of predatory dinosaurs. Othnielosaurus like other ornithopods were herbivorous dinosaurs that would have focused upon eating small low growing plants. The cheek teeth of Othnielosaurus were leaf shaped and well suited for slicing through softer plants, while cheeks would have probably been present on the sides of the mouth in life to prevent plant material spilling out of the sides.
The
naming of Othnielosaurus came about from a
re-evaluation of ornithopod
dinosaurs starting in the late twentieth century and continuing into
the early twenty-first that saw many fossils that were once attributed
to genera such as Nanosaurus,
Laosaurus
and Othniela
shuffled around
and in some instances used to create the Othnielosaurus
genus. The
result is that some genera such as Othnielia lost
most of their
assigned fossils, while others such as Laosaurus
lost whole species,
in this case L. consors.
Othnielosaurus
was named in honour of the famous American palaeontologist Othniel
Charles Marsh, and this is not the first time a dinosaur was named
after him, Marshosaurus
and Othnielia too was also named after him.
Marsh was one of the two main players to be involved in a period
of American palaeontological history dubbed the Bone Wars, a fierce
rivalry between Marsh and another named Edward Drinker Cope. Cope too
also has an ornithopod dinosaur similar to Othnielosaurus
named after
him, this time just called Drinker.
Further reading
- Notice of some new vertebrate fossils. - American Journal of
Science and Arts 14: 249–256. - Othniel Charles Marsh -
1877.
- Notice of new dinosaurian reptiles from the Jurassic formations.
- American Journal of Science and Arts 14: 514–516. -
Othniel Charles Marsh - 1877.
- Skeleton of a hypsilophodontid dinosaur (Nanosaurus (?) rex)
from the Upper Jurassic of Utah. - Brigham Young University
Geology Series 20: 137–157.- P. M. Galton & James
A.
Jenson - 1973.
- Teeth of ornithischian dinosaurs (mostly Ornithopoda) from the
Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of the western United States.
- P. M. Galton - In Horns and Beaks: Ceratopsian and
Ornithopod Dinosaurs, Kenneth Carpenter (ed) - 2007.
- A photo documentation of bipedal ornithischian dinosaurs from the
Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, USA. - Geology of the Intermountain
West. 5: 167–207. - Kenneth Carpenter & Peter M. Galton - 2018.
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