Stokesosaurus

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Stokesosaurus
Fossil range: Late Jurassic

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Superorder:	Dinosauria
Order:	Saurischia
Suborder:	Theropoda
Superfamily:	Tyrannosauroidea
Genus:	Stokesosaurus Madsen, 1974

Species

S. clevelandi Madsen, 1974 (type)

Stokesosaurus ("Stokes' lizard") is a genus of small early tyrannosaur from the Late Jurassic period of Utah. It was named after Utah geologist William Lee Stokes.

The holotype consists of a hip bone, originally thought to belong to the possible early tyrannosaur Iliosuchus (Galton, 1976), as well as several vertebrae and a partial braincase (Chure and Madsen, 1998). Another ilium referred to this dinosaur (Foster and Chure, 2000) is lost but may actually belong to the related Aviatyrannis, and a premaxilla thought to belong to Iliosuchus (Madsen, 1974) is actually from Tanycolagreus.

Stokesosaurus and Tanycolagreus are about the same size, and some people think that they are just two names for the same animal.^{[citation needed]} Ironically and unfortunately, one of Tanycolagreus' only missing bones is the ilium, the best known material for Stokesosaurus.

[edit] References

Madsen (1974). "A new theropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Utah". Journal of Paleontology 48: 27-31.
Galton (1976). "Iliosuchus, a Jurassic dinosaur from Oxfordshire and Utah". Paleontology 19: 587-589.
Chure and Madsen (1998). "An unusual braincase (?Stokesosaurus clevelandi) from the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, Utah (Morrison Formation; Late Jurassic)". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 18(1): 115-125 [April 10, 1998].
Foster and Chure (2000). "An ilium of a juvenile Stokesosaurus (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic: Kimmeridgian), Meade County, South Dakota". Brigham Young University Geology Studies 45: 5-10.
Jurassic West