Dinosaurus

Dinosaurus is an extinct genus of therapsid of controversial affinities. Its type and only species is Dinosaurus murchisonii. It is only known from a partial snout from the Permian of Russia. Its taxonomic history is intertwined with several other poorly-known Russian therapsids, particularly Rhopalodon, Brithopus, and Phthinosuchus.

This article is about the therapsid genus. For the group of animals, see Dinosaur. For the film, see Dinosaurus! For the temnospondyl amphibian, see Dvinosaurus.

Dinosaurus
Temporal range: ~
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Synapsida
Clade: Therapsida
Genus: †Dinosaurus
Fischer, 1847
Species:
†D. murchisonii
Binomial name
†Dinosaurus murchisonii
(Fischer, 1845)

Dinosaurus is not a dinosaur; the similarity in names is coincidental. Dinosaurs belong to the clade Dinosauria, a clade of reptiles, whereas Dinosaurus is a therapsid, and as such, more closely related to mammals. Dinosauria was named only five years prior to Dinosaurus, in 1842.

History of study

The holotype of Dinosaurus murchisonii was collected in a copper mine in the Orenburg Governorate of the Russian Empire during the 1840s.[2] It was collected in two pieces, found on separate occasions. The director of the mine, Wagenheim von Qualen, initially identified the first piece as a plant fossil in a letter to Johann Fischer von Waldheim, but Fischer realized it was part of a skull and described it as a new species of Rhopalodon, R. murchisonii, in 1845.[3] In 1847, Fischer described the second piece and established a new genus, Dinosaurus, for the species. In 1848, Eichwald recognized that the two specimens were not only from the same species, but fit together as parts of the same individual. He provisionally returned the species to Rhopalodon, as he felt there were not enough differences yet identified to justify a second genus, and noted the existence of the similarly-named taxon Dinosauria, named by Richard Owen only a few years prior, in 1842.[4]

Wagenheim von Qualen donated both specimens to the collection of Maximilian de Beuharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, and the originals have since been lost. However, casts of the specimens are housed in the Paleontological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences under the catalog numbers PIN 296/1 and PIN 296/2.

In 1894, H. G. Seeley remarked that Cliorhizodon, which is now regarded as a junior synonym of Syodon,[5] could not be distinguished from Dinosaurus.[6] In 1954, Ivan Efremov synonymized Dinosaurus with Brithopus. This has been followed by some other authors,[7] but Christian Kammerer has regarded Brithopus, which is based on only a partial humerus, as a nomen dubium, and as such did not regard Dinosaurus as synonymous with it.

In 2000, M. F. Ivakhnenko synonymized Phthinosuchus with Dinosaurus.[8] As such, he classified Dinosaurus in the family Phthinosuchidae, which he grouped with Rubidgeidae[lower-alpha 1] in the superfamily Rubidgeoidea of the order Gorgonopia.[10] Kammerer has remarked that the limited anatomical information available for Dinosaurus makes it hard to confirm this proposed synonymy.[11]

See also

Gresslyosaurus – Originally was to be called "Dinosaurus"

Footnotes
  1. Usually treated as a subfamily, Rubidgeinae, within Gorgonopidae.[9]

References
  1. Kammerer 2011, p. 288.
  2. Eichwald 1848, p. 6.
  3. Baur & Case 1899, p. 32.
  4. Eichwald 1848, pp. 7–8.
  5. Kammerer 2011, p. 263–264.
  6. Seeley 1894, p. 670.
  7. Battail & Surkov 2003, p. 97.
  8. Ivakhnenko 2000, p. 75.
  9. Kammerer 2016.
  10. Ivakhnenko 2002, p. 58.
  11. Kammerer 2011, p. 289.

Works cited
  • Battail, Bernard; Surkov, Mikhail V. (2003-12-04). "Mammal-like reptiles from Russia". In Benton, Michael J.; Shishkin, Mikhail A.; Unwin, David M.; Kurochkin, Evgenii N. (eds.). The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-54582-2.
  • Baur, G.; Case, E. C. (1899). "The history of the Pelycosauria, with a description of the genus Dimetrodon, Cope". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 20.
  • Eichwald, Eduard (1848), Ueber die Saurier des Kupferführenden Zechsteins Russlands, Moscow
  • Kammerer, Christian F. (2011). "Systematics of the Anteosauria (Therapsida: Dinocephalia)". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 9 (2): 261–304. doi:10.1080/14772019.2010.492645. eISSN 1478-0941. ISSN 1477-2019. S2CID 84799772.
  • Kammerer, Christian F. (2016-01-26). "Systematics of the Rubidgeinae (Therapsida: Gorgonopsia)". PeerJ. 4: –1608. doi:10.7717/peerj.1608. ISSN 2167-8359. PMC 4730894. PMID 26823998.
  • Ivakhnenko, M. F. (2000). "Зстемменозухи и примитивные териодонты позлней перми" [Estemmenosuches and primitive theriodonts from the Late Permian]. Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal (in Russian) (2): 72–80.
  • Ivakhnenko, M. F. (2002). "Систематика восточноевропейских горгонопий (Therapsida)" [Taxonomy of East European Gorgonopia (Therapsida)]. Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal (in Russian) (3): 56–65.
  • Seeley, H.G. (April 1894). "Researches on the structure, organization, and classification of the fossil reptilia .—Part IX. section 1. On the Therosuchia". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 13 (76): 374–376. doi:10.1080/00222939408677718.
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