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Heterodontosaurs and "dinofuzz"
DMLers,
If anyone has a .pdf of this article they could send me offlist, I would
greatly appreciate it!
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Nature. 2009 Mar 19;458(7236):333-6.
Comment in:
Nature. 2009 Mar 19;458(7236):293-5.
An Early Cretaceous heterodontosaurid dinosaur with filamentous integumentary
structures.
Zheng XT, You HL, Xu X, Dong ZM.
Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, Lianhuashan Road West, Pingyi, Shandong,
273300, China.
Ornithischia is one of the two major groups of dinosaurs, with
heterodontosauridae as one of its major clades. Heterodontosauridae is
characterized by small, gracile bodies and a problematic phylogenetic position.
Recent phylogenetic work indicates that it represents the most basal group of
all well-known ornithischians. Previous heterodontosaurid records are mainly
from the Early Jurassic period (205-190 million years ago) of Africa. Here we
report a new heterodontosaurid, Tianyulong confuciusi gen. et sp. nov., from
the Early Cretaceous period (144-99 million years ago) of western Liaoning
Province, China. Tianyulong extends the geographical distribution of
heterodontosaurids to Asia and confirms the clade's previously questionable
temporal range extension into the Early Cretaceous period. More surprisingly,
Tianyulong bears long, singular and unbranched filamentous integumentary (outer
skin) structures. This represents the first confirmed report, to our knowledge,
of filamentous integumentary structures in an ornithischian dinosaur.
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Guy Leahy