Study of the Hungarian Late Cretaceous Archosauria fauna
Informations
- Funding country
Hungary- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 4/1/2008
- End date
- 3/31/2011
- Budget
- 17,159 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postdoctoral Programme | Grant | 4/1/2008 | 3/31/2011 | 17,159 EUR |
Abstract
The Late Cretaceous Iharkút locality in the Bakony Mountains, discovered in 2000, represents the first Mesozoic vertebrate site in Hungary. Up to now, several partial skeletons and thousands of isolated bones and teeth have been unearthed by systematic excavations. The vertebrate remains are from 25 different taxa, including fishes, amphibians, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, dinosaurs, birds and pterosaurs. The goal of this project is to continue the systematic excavations of the Iharkút site and collect all the vertebrate remains of the bone-yielding beds. Furthermore, I plan to reconstruct the jaw adductor musculature and the jaw mechanism of the heterodont crocodile discovered frequently in these beds. In addition, on the basis of wear pattern analyses of the tooth crowns the dietary preference of the animal is also discussed and published. Further goals of this project are comparative studies of other heterodont crocodiles in the aspect functional morphology that helps to clarify that the developed food processing in the mouth, as in mammals, was more frequent among crocodyliforms than previously thought. First among nodosaurid ankylosaurs, wear pattern analyses on the teeth of the armored dinosaur discovered in Iharkút are planned and the possible, complex jaw closure is discussed. The results also helps to gather information on the processed food of the animal. also plan to make the taxonomical and anatomical description of the additional archosaur elements that are found but still not published from the site.