Kerberosaurus

Taxobox
name = "Kerberosaurus"
status = fossil
fossil_range = Upper Cretaceous
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Sauropsida
superordo = Dinosauria
ordo = Ornithischia
familia = Hadrosauridae
subfamilia = Hadrosaurinae
genus = "Kerberosaurus"
binomial = "Kerberosaurus manakini"
binomial_authority = Bolotsky and Godefroit, 2004

"Kerberosaurus" (meaning "Kerberos lizard") was a genus of hadrosaurine duckbill dinosaur from the (?late) Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Tsagayan Formation of Blagoveschensk, Amur Region, Russia. It is based on bonebed material including skull remains indicating that it was related to "Saurolophus" and "Prosaurolophus". Because it was described so recently, it has only been in one paper: its initial description.

History

In 1984, Yuri Bolotsky and the Amur Complex Integrated Research Institute discovered a large dinosaur bonebed at Blagoveschensk. Most of the remains were of "Amurosaurus" (a lambeosaurine hadrosaur), but some came from turtles, crocodilians, theropods, nodosaurids, and a new hadrosaurine.cite journal |last=Bolotsky |first=Y.L. |coauthors=and Godefroit, P. |year=2004 |title=A new hadrosaurine dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Far Eastern Russia |journal=Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=351–365 |doi=10.1671/1110 ] For the hadrosaurine, cranial material (holotype AENM 1/319, braincase, plus others) was distinctive enough to permit the naming of a new genus.

Description

Diagnostic characters included narrow frontals, unique form of the braincase, and a well-demarcated division between the area of bone surrounding the nostrils and the bone outside of it. No reconstruction of the fragmentary partial skull was offered. In their cladistic analysis, the authors found "Kerberosaurus" to be the sister taxon to "Saurolophus" and "Prosaurolophus".

Paleobiogeography

Bolotsky and Godefroit (2004) found the paleobiogeographic implications interesting. The relationship they described provides additional support for land links and faunal interchange between eastern Asia and North America at the end of the Cretaceous, as the other two genera are either known only in North America or are known from a species there. The "sauroloph" group would have had to split from the nest closest group, the "edmontosaur" group, in the early Campanian, from Asia, and moved west while leaving a splinter population that would lead to "Kerberosaurus", then return to Asia at a later point and produce "Saurolophus angustirostris".

Paleobiology

As a hadrosaurid, "Kerberosaurus" would have been a large bipedalquadrupedal herbivore, consuming plant matter with complex dental batteries.cite book |last= Horner|first=John R. |authorlink=Jack Horner (paleontologist) |coauthors=Weishampel, David B.; and Forster, Catherine A. |editor= Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.)|title=The Dinosauria |edition=2nd |year= 2004|publisher=University of California Press |location=Berkeley |isbn=0-520-24209-2 |pages=pp. 438-463 |chapter=Hadrosauridae]

References