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Xiaosaurus

Xiaosaurus - Meaning: Little Lizard

Xiaosaurus (sheow-SAWR-us), is a dubious genus of dinosaur that lived in the Bathonian age, during the Middle Jurassic period, around 169 - 163 million years ago, in the Sichuan Basin of China.

Dinosaur Xiaosaurus

Xiaosaurus Characteristics

Xiaosaurus was a small, fast, lizard-like dinosaur and measured 3 - 5 feet (1 - 1.5 metres) in length and weighed around 40 kilograms. It was a lightly built, bipedal ornithopod (bird-footed) and walked on 2 long legs that were equipped with 4 clawed toes. Its fore limbs were short and were equipped with 5 clawed fingers. Xiaosaurus had a slender body and a long, stiff pointed tail that was used as a counter-balance. It had a small head with a beak, a flexible neck, large eyes and its cheek teeth were leaf-shaped. Unlike other ornithischians, the fabrosaurids did not have cheek pouches.


Xiaosaurus was a herbivore and ate prehistoric plants, particularly low lying plants because it was small.


Xiaosaurus intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was midway among the dinosaurs.


Xiaosaurus is known only from teeth and a few isolated bones, remains too fragmentary to accurately classify the species. An incomplete fossil was found in China.


Xiaosaurus was named by Dong and Tang in 1983. The type species is X. dashanpensis.

XIAOSAUARUS CLASSIFICATION:
Kingdom:
Animalia (animals)
Phylum:
Chordata (having a hollow nerve chord ending in a brain)
Class:
Sauropsida
Superorder:
Dinosauria
Order:
Ornithischia
Family:
Fabrosauridae
Genus:
Xiaosaurus
Species:
X. dashanpensis Dong and Tang, 1983 (type)





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