Kangnasaurus Temporal range:
Early Cretaceous,
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Thigh bone of cf. Kangnasaurus | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Clade: | † Ornithischia |
Clade: | † Ornithopoda |
Clade: | † Elasmaria |
Genus: | †
Kangnasaurus Haughton, 1915 |
Species: | †K. coetzeei
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Binomial name | |
†Kangnasaurus coetzeei Haughton, 1915
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Kangnasaurus (meaning "Farm Kangnas lizard") is a genus of iguanodontian ornithopod dinosaur found in supposedly Early Cretaceous rocks of South Africa. It is known from a tooth and possibly some postcranial remains found in the early- Aptian Kalahari Deposits Formation. [1] It was probably similar to Dryosaurus.
Kangnasaurus was named in 1915 by Sidney H. Haughton. The type species is Kangnasaurus coetzeei. The generic name refers to the Kangnas farm; the specific name to the farmer, Coetzee. Kangnasaurus is based on holotype SAM 2732, a tooth found at a depth of 34 metres in a well at Farm Kangnas, in the Orange River valley of northern Cape Province, South Africa. [2] The age of these rocks, conglomerates in an ancient crater lake, is unclear; they are thought to be from the Early Cretaceous (probably early- Aptian). [3] Haughton thought SAM 2732 was a tooth from the upper jaw, but Michael Cooper reidentified it as a lower jaw tooth in 1985. [4] This had implications for its classification: Haughton thought the tooth was that of an iguanodontid, [2] while Cooper identified it as from an animal more like Dryosaurus, a more basal ornithopod. [4]
Haughton described several other fossils as possibly belonging to Kangnasaurus. These include five partial thigh bones, a partial thigh bone and shin bone, a partial metatarsal, a partial shin and foot, vertebrae, and unidentified bones. Some of the bones apparently came from other deposits, and Haughton was not certain that they all belonged to his new genus. [2] Cooper was also not certain, but described the other specimens as if they did belong to Kangnasaurus. [4]
Kangnasaurus is usually regarded as dubious, [5] [6] although a 2007 review of dryosaurids by Ruiz-Omeñaca and colleagues retained it as potentially valid, differing from other dryosaurids by details of the thigh bone. [3] Like other basal iguanodontians, it would have been a bipedal herbivore. [6]
At least two recent studies have found it to be an elasmarian instead of a dryosaurid. [7] [8]