| Stokesosaurus Temporal range: Late Jurassic | |
|---|---|
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| An artist's interpretation of Stokesosaurus clevelandi | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Family: | †Proceratosauridae |
| Genus: | †Stokesosaurus Madsen, 1974 |
| Species: | †S. clevelandi |
| Binomial name | |
| †Stokesosaurus clevelandi Madsen, 1974 | |
Stokesosaurus is a proceratosaurid tyrannosauroid dinosaur from late Jurassic Utah, USA. It is one of the oldest known tyrannosauroids. The type and only species of the genus is S. clevelandi.
Discovery History[]
From 1960 onwards Utah geologist William Lee Stokes and his assistant James H. Madsen excavated thousands of disarticulated Allosaurus bones at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in Emery County, Utah. During the early 1970s Madsen began to catalogue these finds in detail, discovering that some remains represented species new to science. In 1974 Madsen named and described the type species S. clevelandi. Its generic name honors Stokes. The specific name refers to the town of Cleveland, Utah, near where it was found.
Classification[]
In 1974 Madsen assigned Stokesosaurus to the family Tyrannosauridae. However, modern cladistic analyses indicate a more basal position, so in 2012 the study by Brusatte and Benson recovered Stokesosaurus as a basal member of the Tyrannosauroidea, and closely related to Eotyrannus and Juratyrant.
In the Media[]
- Stokesosaurus made an appearance in the popular expansion pack of Zoo Tycoon 2: Extinct Animals.