Denversaurus

Denversaurus ("Denver lizard") is a genus of herbivorous nodosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (late Maastrichtian) of western North America.

Discovery and naming[]

In 1986, Carpenter and Breithaupt described a nodosaurid specimen DMNH 468 from the lower Hell Creek Formation and tentatively identified it as Edmontonia sp.

In 1988, Robert Thomas Bakker decided to split the genus Edmontonia. The species Edmontonia rugosidens he made into a separate genus Chassternbergia and the Denver fossil was named and described as a new genus and species. The type species of this genus was Denversaurus schlessmani. The generic name referred to the Denver Museum of Natural History at Denver, Colorado. The specific name honoured Lee E. Schlessman, a major benefactor of the museum and the founder of the Schlessman Family Foundation.

The fossil the species is based on, the holotype DMNH 468, had been discovered in a layer of the late Maastrichtian-age lower Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota. It consists of a skull, lacking the lower jaws, and osteoderms of the body armour. It is part of the collection of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for which the genus was named. Bakker referred a second fossil to the species, specimen AMNH 3076, a skull found by Brown and Roland Bird at the Tornillo Creek in Brewster County, Texas, in a layer of the Aguja Formation, possibly from the Maastrichtian also.

The Black Hills Institute has found a nodosaurid skeleton in Niobrara County, Wyoming, nick-named "Tank", which it has identified as Denversaurus. It contains the lower jaws, parts of the torso and about a hundred osteoderms. It is part of the collection of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center under inventory number BHI 127327.

Dispute about the validity of the genus or species[]

The validity of Denversaurus was disputed in a 1990 paper on ankylosaurian systematics by Kenneth Carpenter, who noted that Bakker's diagnosis of Denversaurus was based primarily on Bakker's artistic restoration of the holotype in an uncrushed state. Since DMNH 468 was found crushed, Carpenter assigned Denversaurus to a Edmontonia sp., even though he noted its similarity to Chassternbergia (as Edmontonia rugosidens). A number of workers treated Denversaurus as synonymous with either E. rugosidens or E. longiceps, or alternatively a valid species of Edmontonia, an Edmontonia schlessmani.

In a SVP 2015 abstract, Michael Burns revisited the systematics of latest Cretaceous nodosaurids from the Western Interior. According to Burns, Denversaurus is a valid taxon based on its phylogenetic position.

Description[]

Although treated as a junior synonym of Edmontonia by some workers, subsequent research indicates that it is a distinct nodosaurid genus. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated the length of Denversaurus at six meters, its weight at three tons.

Bakker considered Denversaurus distinct from Edmontonia and Chassternbergia in having a skull wide at the rear, with a more rearward position of the eye sockets. The holotype skull has a length of 496 millimetres and a rear width of 346 millimetres. In the referred specimen AMNH 3076 these proportions are less extreme, measuring 395 by 220 millimetre. According to Carpenter, the greater width was due to crushing.

The study by Burns concluded that Denversaurus was different from Edmontonia but similar to Panoplosaurus in having inflated, convex, cranial sculpturing with visible sulci, or troughs, between individual top skull armour elements, but is distinct from Panoplosaurus in having a relatively wider snout.

References[]

In popular culture[]

It will appear as a non-playable creature in the game Saurian.