Ouranosaurus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ouranosaurus Temporal range: Lower Cretaceous |
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| Conservation status | |
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Fossil
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Ornithischia |
| Suborder: | Ornithopoda |
| Infraorder: | Iguanodontia |
| Family: | Iguanodontidae |
| Genus: | Ouranosaurus |
| Binomial name | |
| Ouranosaurus nigeriensis Taquet, 1976 |
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Ouranosaurus was a sail-backed, plant-eating, iguanodontid dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous period. It was about 24 feet (7 m) long and may have weighed about 4 tons.
Two almost complete Ouranosaurus fossils were found in the southern Sahara Desert, in northeast Niger, in 1966. Spinosaurus, a large, sail-backed meat-eater, was one of its contemporaries in the hot, Cretaceous environment of north Africa. Ouranosaurus was named by the French paleontologist Phillippe Taquet in 1976.
