Lukousaurus

Lukousaurus is an archosauromorph based on most of a small skull's snout, displaying distinctive lachrymal horns, found in the Early Jurassic-age Lower Lufeng Formation, Yunnan, China and was described by Chung Chien Young in 1940.[1] The generic name refers to the Lugou Bridge, lit. “crossroads”, near Beijing, where the Sino-Japanese War started.[1] L. yini is tentatively classified as a theropod dinosaur by some allied to ceratosaurs, by others a coelurosaur. Its skull is rather robust for its size though the teeth were described by the author as typically theropodan. It may, however, be a crurotarsan or a primitive crocodilian.[2] Whatever Lukousaurus was, it was definitely an archosauromorph.[3]

Lukousaurus
Temporal range: Early Jurassic, 196.5–189.5 Ma Sinemurian
Skull
Scientific classification
Kingdom:
Animalia
Phylum:
Chordata
Class:
Sauropsida
Infraclass:
Archosauromorpha
Superorder:
incertae sedis
Genus:
†Lukousaurus

Young, 1940
Binomial name
†Lukousaurus yini
Young, 1940

In either the late 1930s or in 1940, the front half of a fossilized skull, which became the holotype of Lukousaurus yini, was discovered in Dahungtien, China.[1]

References
  1. C.-C. Young. 1940. Preliminary notes on the Lufeng vertebrate fossils. Bulletin of the Geological Society of China 20(3-4):235-239
  2. Theropod Database Blog post about Lukousaurus
  3. Knoll F., Rohrberg K. 2012. CT scanning, rapid prototyping and re-examination of a partial skull of a basal crocodylomorph from the Late Triassic of Germany. Swiss Journal of Geosciences 105:109–115.


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