Indosaurus
Name:
Indosaurus
(Indian lizard).
Phonetic: In-do-sore-us.
Named By: Charles Alfred Matley &
Friedrich von Huene - 1933.
Synonyms: Megalosurus matleyi.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Theropoda, Abelisauridae.
Species: I. matleyi (type).
Diet: Carnivore.
Size: Uncertain due to lack of fossil remains.
Known locations: India.
Time period: Maastrichtian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial skull, as well as
further partial post cranial remains attributed to the genus.
Abelisaur
theropods ranged across much of the southern continents during the late
Cretaceous and India certainly seems to have had its share of them.
However when Indosaurus was fist named by Matley
and von Huene in
1933, the abelisaurs were still an unknown group of theropods,
which is why they initially described Indosaurus
as an allosaur.
There
is quite a bit of confusion over the classification and actual validity
of some of the Indian abelisaurs. In 1933 Matley and von Huene
also named two other abelisaurs called Indosuchus
and Compsosuchus
and
today there is speculation that these and Indosaurus
may actually be
all the same genus of dinosaur. Study in this theory has been
hampered however since the holotype fossils of Indosaurus
are now
lost, so more direct comparison incorporating more modern techniques
of analysis is impossible.
A
species of Megalosaurus,
M. matleyi, has also been attributed to
Indosaurus, although this is not at all that
surprising since
Megalosaurus has for a long time been treated as a
wastebasket taxon
where uncertain theropod remains have been attributed just because the
fossils are of the same basic type of dinosaur. Orthogoniosaurus
has
also been proposed as a synonym to Indosaurus,
but this genus is only
based upon the description of a tooth, which is now thought to have
been from a ceratosaur.
Although
the partial skull of the holotype is now list, one feature noted
about Indosaurus is that it was thought that it
might have had horns
above its eyes. If this interpretation was correct then this would
have made it very similar to Carnotaurus
from South America,
suggesting that Indosaurus might have been a
carnotaurine abelisaur.
Another carnotaurine abelisaur that is also from India is Rajasaurus.
Further reading
- The Cretaceous Saurischia and Ornithischia of the Central Provinces
of India. - Palaeontologica Indica (New Series), Memoirs of the
Geological Survey of India 21(1): 1-74 - F. von Huene & C. A.
Matley - 1933.
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