Albisaurus
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Extinct (fossil)
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Albisaurus (meaning "Albis [River] lizard") was once thought to be a genus of dinosaur, but is now thought to be a non-dinosaurian archosaur.[1][2] It was first described by Antonin Fritsch (also spelt Frič), a Czech palaeontologist, in 1893, but the remains are sparse. The validity of the species cannot be proven based on the fossil remains, and it is usually marked as a nomen dubium.
The generic name Albisaurus is derived from the Latin albus (albi-); after the River Albis, as it was known in Roman times, now the Bile Labe, a part of the Elbe River system, which flows through the western Czech Republic, near a site where the type fossils were found; plus the Greek sauros meaning "lizard". Fritsch named it as a species of Iguanodon.
The type species is Albisaurus albinus. The specific name is derived from the Latin albus (alb-), "white, bright", and the Latin suffix -inus; "belonging to", alluding to the modern-day Bile Labe, or "White Elbe" of the western Czech Republic, known during the rule of the Roman Empire for the purity and clarity of the water. A second species, A. scutifer, was actually the original type species, but, as A. albinus is thought to be the same thing, A. scutifer was sunk into the older name.
[edit] References
- ^ (German) Brinkmann, W. (1988). Zur Fundgeschichte und Systematik der Ornithopoden (Ornithischia, Reptilia) aus der Ober-Kreide von Europa. Documenta Naturae 45:1-157.
- ^ Glut, D.F. (1997). "Excluded Genera", Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia. McFarland & Company, 1005-1010. ISBN 0-89950-917-7.
[edit] External links
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