A third look at Daemonosaurus
Daemonosaurus is an odd sort of dinosaur that we looked at earlier here and here. Huge teeth. Seems hyper-carnivorous. Apparently not so according to its phylogenetic nesting.
Earlier the large reptile tree nested Daemonosaurus at the base of the Ornithischia (more primitive than Scelidosaurus), not far from Pampadromaeus, Thecodontosaurus and Sacisaurus, among the other phytodinosaur clades. After learning about the palate of Heterodontosaurus, gaining new insights into Pantydraco and revising the scoring of several dinosaur taxa (thanks M. Mortimer), I traced another DGS illustration and created a new reconstruction. Displaced bones from the inside of the jaws, like the coronoid and descending processes of the pterygoid, I recognized after learning about them in Heterodontosaurus.
Figure 1. Daemonosaurus skull in 3 views. The new reconstruction is narrower than previously with a new descending pterygoid flange and very few other refinements. The jaw is shorter. The dentary fang(s) appear to slip into that pmx/mx notch as in Heterodontosaurus.
See, I’m always ready to change and ready to learn.
And there’s still more to learn, I’m sure. Here are the new in situ images.
Figure 3. Daemonosaurus skull. Note the distinct prefrontal and palpebral. Not sure what that elliptical lavendar bone is in the temple region. Perhaps it is an occipital bone, like the supraoccipital. Note the depth of the quadrate. The post narial process of the premaxilla is a key trait shared with ornithischians.
Figure 2. Daemonosaurus skull other side. Parietal crest in blue in the orbit. The back half of the prefrontal is broken off along with that big gap in the frontal. This side’s palpebral has drifted to the top rear of the orbit in magenta. Part of the maxilla nearest the antorbital fenestra is missing. Here again the quadrate is deep. Jugal is split into three large parts.
Figure 5. Daemonosaurus mandible traced, left side. Purple appears to be the coronoid flipped. Aqua blue appears to be the pteroid descending/transverse flange.
The long cervicals suggest Daemonosaurus had a long, sauropod-like neck, not like that of a typical ornithischian.
Figure 6. Daemonosaurus and kin. Here a selection of basal dinosaurs is divided into clades. Note the strong resemblances. These taxa are not too far from one another. The real flowering of the Dinosauria comes in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Mortimer’s basal dinosaur tree placed Sacisaurus basal to plant-eaters and theropods nested as derived from them. That doesn’t happen in this scenario.
Daemonosaurus has a high naris, like Herrerasaurus and Massospondylus. The narial depression drops first, then the naris follows on other taxa.
Daemonosaurus has a shorter rostrum than Herrerasaurus and shorter than Pampadromaeus, but not as short as the phytodinosaurs.
The descending quadrate and quadratojugal in Daemonosaurus are also found in Heterodontosaurus and others.
Note the straight ventral maxilla on theropods.
References
Sues H-D, Nesbitt SJ, Berman DS and Henrici AC 2011. A late-surviving basal theropod dinosaur from the latest Triassic of North America. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, published online
Source: http://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/a-third-look-at-daemonosaurus/
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