Dyslocosaurus
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Dyslocosaurus Temporal range: Late Jurassic |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Sauropodomorpha |
| Infraorder: | Sauropoda |
| Family: | Dicraeosauridae |
| Genus: | Dyslocosaurus |
| Species | |
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Dyslocosaurus (meaning "hard-to-place lizard") is the name given in 1992 to a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period of Wyoming, North America.
The holotype or type specimen the genus is based on, AC 663, is part of the collection of the Amherst College Museum of Natural History. It was collected by professor Frederic Brewster Loomis. However, the only available information regarding its provenance is that given on the label: "Lance Creek", a county in east Wyoming. Loomis himself thought that it stemmed from the Lance Formation, dating from the Late Cretaceous Maastrichtian.
In 1963 the specimen was brought to the attention of John Stanton McIntosh, who later, together with William Coombs and Dale Russell, decided to create a new genus and species for it. The type species is Dyslocosaurus polyonychius. The genus name is derived from Greek dys, "bad, "poor", and Latin locus, "place", a reference to the paucity of data regarding the type locality of the fossil. The specific name is derived from Greek polys, "many", and onyx, "claw". The describers interpreted the remains, consisting of some limb bones, as those of a diplodocid dinosaur. From this they concluded that it in fact dated from the Late Jurassic Period, like most diplodocids. The species name, meaning "five claws", implies that Dyslocosaurus had four, or perhaps five, claws on the foot, whereas other diplodocids have only three.
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