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Notes on the cheek region of the Late Jurassic theropod dinosaur Allosaurus

  • Evers, Serjoscha W. Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Foth, Christian Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Rauhut, Oliver W.M. Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläntologie und Geologie, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns (SNSB), München, Germany - Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Palaeontology and Geobiology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany - GeoBioCenter, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany
    07.02.2020
Published in:
  • PeerJ. - 2020, vol. 8, p. e8493
English Allosaurus, from the Late Jurassic of North America and Europe, is a model taxon for Jurassic basal tetanuran theropod dinosaurs. It has achieved an almost iconic status due to its early discovery in the late, 19th century, and due to the abundance of material from the Morrison Formation of the western U.S.A., making Allosaurus one of the best-known theropod taxa. Despite this, various aspects of the cranial anatomy of Allosaurus are surprisingly poorly understood. Here, we discuss the osteology of the cheek region, comprised by the jugal, maxilla, and lacrimal. This region of the skull is of importance for Allosaurus taxonomy and phylogeny, particularly because Allosaurus has traditionally been reconstructed with an unusual cheek configuration, and because the European species Allosaurus europaeus has been said to be different from North American material in the configuration of these bones. Based on re- examination of articulated and disarticulated material from a number of repositories, we show that the jugal participates in the antorbital fenestra, contradicting the common interpretation. The jugal laterally overlies the lacrimal, and forms an extended antorbital fossa with this bone. Furthermore, we document previously unrecorded pneumatic features of the jugal of Allosaurus.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences et de médecine
Department
Département de Géosciences
Language
  • English
Classification
Palaeontology
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/308648
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