biology

Kundurosaurus

Kundurosaurus is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kundurosaurus rather than just read about it. In short: Kundurosaurus is an extinct genus of saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaur known from the latest Cretaceous (probably late Maastrichtian stage) of Amur Region, Far Eastern Russia. It is a monotypic genus that contains a single species, Kundurosaurus nagornyi.

Key takeaways

Kundurosaurus belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
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Connect Kundurosaurus to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kundurosaurus from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kundurosaurus is an extinct genus of saurolophine hadrosaurid dinosaur known from the latest Cretaceous (probably late Maastrichtian stage) of Amur Region, Far Eastern Russia. It is a monotypic genus that contains a single species, Kundurosaurus nagornyi.

Discovery

Kundurosaurus is known from holotype AENM 2/921, a partial, disarticulated skull, including a nearly complete braincase (AENM 2/921 1-2), two quadrates (3-4), squamosal (5), postorbital (6), frontal (7) and parietal (8) bones. The referred specimens are AENM 2/45-46, two jugals; AENM 2/83-84, 2/86, maxillae; AENM 2/57-58, nasals; AENM 2/48, postorbital; AENM 2/19, quadrate; AENM 2/121, 2/928 partial braincases; AENM 2/846, 2/902, dentaries; AENM 2/906, scapula; AENM 2/913, sternal; AENM 2/117, 2/903, 2/907-908, humeri; AENM 2/905, ulna; AENM 2/904, radius; AENM 2/922, nearly complete pelvic girdle and associated sacral elements. These were found at the same level as the holotype, but may belong to other individuals. All specimens are housed in the Amur Natural History Museum of the Institute of Geology and Nature Management, Russia. Kundurosaurus was first described and named by Pascal Godefroit, Yuri L. Bolotsky and Pascaline Lauters in 2012. The type species is Kundurosaurus nagornyi. The generic name is derived from Kundur, the type and only known locality, and sauros, "lizard" in Ancient Greek. The specific name, nagornyi, honors V.A. Nagorny from the Far Eastern Institute of Mineral Resources, for discovering the Kundur locality in 1990.

All Kundurosaurus specimens were collected in the Kundur locality. The site belongs to the Wodehouseia spinata – Aquilapollenites subtilis palynozone, dating to the Maastrichtian stage, probably the Late Maastrichtian, of the Late Cretaceous period, about 67-66 million years ago. The Kundur site was discovered by Vladimir A. Nagorny in 1990. He collected fossil bones in a road section along the Chita – Khabarovsk highway near the village of Kundur and sent them to Yuri L. Bolotsky. Large-scale excavations started at Kundur in 1999. Besides the abundant Olorotitan arharensis material, it has yielded many disarticulated saurolophine specimens. All these specimens were assigned to Kundurosaurus because the describers considered the recovered material to be homogeneous, and suggested that there is no reason to believe that more than one single saurolophine taxon lived in the Kundur area by latest Cretaceous period. Kundur is one of four rich dinosaur localities that have been discovered in the southeastern part ("Lower Zeya depression") of Zeya-Bureya sedimentary basin, eastern Asia: Jiayin and Wulaga localities are located in the Yuliangze Formation of northern Heilongjiang Province, China and Blagoveschensk and Kundur localities are located in the Udurchukan Formation of southern Amur Region, Russia. In each locality, the dinosaur fauna is largely dominated by lambeosaurine hadrosaurids (Charonosaurus jiayinensis and some non-diagnostic material of Mandschurosaurus amurensis from Jiayin, Sahaliyania from Wulaga, Amurosaurus from Blagoveschensk, and Olorotitan from Kundur), but the indeterminate hadrosaurid Arkharavia, from Kundur, and saurolophine (non-crested or solid-crested) hadrosaurids are also represented (Saurolophus kryschtofovici and other non-diagnostic material of M. amurensis from Jiayin, Wulagasaurus from Wulaga, Kerberosaurus from Blagoveschensk and Kundurosaurus from Kundur).

Description

Kundurosaurus was a medium-sized hadrosaur, measuring 7 metres (23 ft) long and weighing 2 metric tons (2.2 short tons). It is a saurolophine diagnosed by four autapomorphies, unique derived traits. It has a prominent and thick ridge on the lateral side of the nasal that borders caudally the circumnasal depression and invades the caudal plate of the nasal. Its caudal buttress of the proximal head of the scapula is oriented quite laterally, parallel to the pseudoacromial process. The preacetabular process of the ilium is straight and only moderately deflected ventrally by an angle of 160°. It does not reach the level of the plane formed by the bases of the iliac and pubic peduncles. Finally, with Kundurosaurus the axis of the postacetabular process of the ilium is strongly twisted along its length, so that its lateral side progressively faces dorsolaterally.

Classification

A phylogenetic analysis of saurolophines performed by Godefroit, Bolotsky & Lauters (2012) indicates that Kundurosaurus is nested within a clade including Edmontosaurini and Saurolophini, possibly as a sister-taxon of Kerberosaurus. It is based on the data matrix of Prieto-Márquez (2010), however Prieto-Márquez (2010) recovered Edmontosaurini as a sister-taxon of a monophyletic clade formed by Saurolophini and Kritosaurini while in Godefroit et al. (2012) the Edmontosaurini + Saurolophini clade is well supported and excludes Kritosaurini. The position of Kundurosaurus within Edmontosaurini collapses when fragmentary taxa are excluded from the analysis. In the full analysis, Kundurosaurus is placed as the sister-taxon of Kerberosaurus, which is known from the same region. It may therefore be postulated that K. nagornyi is a second species of the genus Kerberosaurus. This clade, however, is very weakly supported and synapomorphies uniting both taxa can only been found under optimization. Furthermore, although overlapping materials between the genera are limited to their partial skulls, according to Godefroit et al. (2012) Kundurosaurus can be differentiated from Kerberosaurus on the basis of the rostrocaudally longer and more robust dorsal maxillary process, more robust and more curved downwards nasal, much more robust and proportionally higher quadrate and the strong ridge extends obliquely along the lateral side of the exoccipital condyloid in Kundurosaurus. Additionally, the frontals of Kerberosaurus are particularly narrow and do not participate in the orbital margin, the rostral margin of the parietal is depressed around the contact area with the frontals, and Kerberosaurus has hook-like palatine process.

On the other hand, Xing et al. (2014) considered Kundurosaurus nagornyi to be a junior synonym of Kerberosaurus manakini on the basis of their co-occurrence within the same formation and presence of shared characters in their skeletons. The cladogram below follows Godefroit et al. (2012) analysis.

Palaeobiology Bioerosional traces on the maxilla of a Kundurosaurus indicates that it was gnawed on by multituberculates.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kundurosaurus

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kundurosaurus claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kundurosaurus before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kundurosaurus ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kundurosaurus

In research: Kundurosaurus appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kundurosaurus in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kundurosaurus is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Dinosaur genera, Dinosaurs of Russia, Fossil taxa described in 2012, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kundurosaurus outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kundurosaurus in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kundurosaurus means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kundurosaurus out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kundurosaurus in simple terms?

Why does Kundurosaurus matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kundurosaurus?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kundurosaurus.