Marshosaurus
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Marshosaurus Temporal range: Late Jurassic, 155–150 Ma |
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| Skull cast | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Family: | †Piatnitzkysauridae |
| Genus: |
†Marshosaurus Madsen, 1976 |
| Species: | †M. bicentesimus |
| Binomial name | |
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Marshosaurus bicentesimus Madsen, 1976 |
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Marshosaurus is a genus of medium-sized carnivorous theropod dinosaur, belonging to the Megalosauroidea, from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of Utah and perhaps Colorado.
Marshosaurus was medium-sized for a theropod. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated its length at 4.5 metres and its weight at two hundred kilogrammes. The holotype ilium has a length of 375 millimetres. If the cranial material is correctly referred, the skull was about sixty centimetres long.
In 2012, Matthew Carrano established one autapomorphy, a unique derived trait of the holotype: the suture between the pubic peduncle and the pubic bone is convex, curving upwards, at the front and concave at the rear.
During the 1960s, over fourteen thousand fossil bones were uncovered at the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry in central Utah. The majority of these belonged to Allosaurus but some were of at least two theropods new to science. In 1974 one of these was named by James Henry Madsen Jr. as the genus Stokesosaurus.
In 1976 the second was by Madsen named as the type species Marshosaurus bicentesimus. The generic name honoured the nineteenth century paleontologist Professor Othniel Charles Marsh, who described many dinosaur fossils during the Bone Wars. The specific name was chosen "in honor of the bicentennial of the United States of America"
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