Segnosaurus
Name:
Segnosaurus
(Slow lizard).
Phonetic: Seg-no-sore-us.
Named By: Altangerel Perle - 1979.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Theropoda, Therizinosauridae.
Species: S. galbinensis
(type).
Diet: Uncertain, but possibly herbivorous.
Size: Estimated at 6 meters long.
Known locations: Mongolia, Bayan Shireh Formation.
Time period: Cenomanian to Turonian of the
Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Many individuals, but
usually of partial and fragementary remains.
Much
of Segnosaurus is still unknown and as such
reconstructions of
Segnosaurus are usually based with the addition of Erlikosaurus
material to fill in the missing parts. Although very similar to one
another, Segnosaurus has a key difference in the
mouth in that the
outer surface of the lower jaw begins at the fourteenth tooth back
rather than the fifth like in Erlikosaurus.
This means that in
the living animal the cheeks of Segnosaurus would
not have covered so
much of the mouth as the cheeks of Erlikosaurus.
The
exact diet of Segnosaurus is hard to establish with
certainty, but
the fact that the therizinosaurids
as a group had recently evolved from
meat eating ancestors to a herbivorous diet may offer some clues.
Also the mandibular teeth are more peg like, an adaptation seen in
some sauropods for stripping fronds of vegetation from the tree canopy.
Further reading
- Segnosauridae - novoe semeistvo teropod is posdnego mela Mongolii
(Segnosauridae - a new family of theropods from the Late Cretaceous of
Mongolia). - Trudy - Sovmestnaya . - Sovetsko-Mongol'skaya
Paleontologicheskaya Ekspeditsiya 8:45-55. - A. Perle - 1979.
- Specializations of the mandibular anatomy and dentition of Segnosaurus
galbinensis (Theropoda: Therizinosauria). - PeerJ. 4. - L. E. Zanno, K.
Tsogtbaatar, T. Chinzorig & T. A. Gates - 2016.
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