Lurdusaurus ('heavy lizard') is a genus of large ornithopod dinosaur that lived in the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous, sometime between 121 to 112 million years ago.
Etymology[]
The generic name is derived from the Latin lurdus, "heavy" while the specific name of the type species, arenatus means "sandy", being a reference to the Tenere desert.
Discovery[]
In 1965 Philippe Taquet discovered the remains of an ornithopod in rock layers of the Elrhaz Formation, in the Tenere desert of Niger, it consists of a partial skeleton with a fragmentary skull belonging to single individual which was given the catalogue number GDF 1700, the remains sat undescribed until 1988 when paleontologist Souad Chabli coined the name "Gravisaurus tenerensis" in her unpublished dissertation on the animal,[2] however since the name was never published it is invalid, the remains were later briefly described and formally given the name Lurdusaurus arenatus by Taquet and Dale Russell in 1999, a name with similar etymology to "Gravisaurus tenerensis".