Ankylosauria

Ankylosaurs
Temporal range:
Middle JurassicLate Cretaceous, Bathonian–Maastrichtian Possible Sinemurian-Pliensbachian record[1]
Collection of ankylosaurs. From top left to right: Liaoningosaurus, Edmontonia, Tianzhenosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus, Scolosaurus, Denversaurus, Gastonia, Borealopelta and Akainacephalus.
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Ornithischia
Clade: Thyreophora
Clade: Eurypoda
Clade: Ankylosauria
Osborn, 1923
Subgroups
Synonyms[3]
  • Ankylosauromorpha Carpenter, 2001

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the clade Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with armor in the form of bony osteoderms, similar to turtles. Ankylosaurs were bulky quadrupeds, with short, powerful limbs. They are known to have first appeared in North Africa during the Middle Jurassic, and persisted until the end of the Late Cretaceous. The two main families of ankylosaurians, Nodosauridae and Ankylosauridae are primarily known from the Northern Hemisphere (North America, Europe and Asia), but the more basal Parankylosauria are known from southern Gondwana (South America, Australia and Antarctica) during the Cretaceous.

Ankylosauria was first named by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1923.[4] In the Linnaean classification system, the group is usually considered either a suborder or an infraorder. It is contained within the group Thyreophora, which also includes the stegosaurs, armored dinosaurs known for their combination of plates and spikes.

  1. ^ Galton, Peter M. (2019-02-28). "Earliest record of an ankylosaurian dinosaur (Ornithischia: Thyreophora): Dermal armor from Lower Kota Formation (Lower Jurassic) of India". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen. 291 (2): 205–219. doi:10.1127/njgpa/2019/0800. ISSN 0077-7749. S2CID 134302379.
  2. ^ Soto-Acuña, Sergio; Vargas, Alexander; Kaluza, Jonatan; Leppe, Marcelo; Botelho, Joao; Palma-Liberona, José; Gutstein, Carolina; Fernández, Roy; Ortiz, Hector; Milla, Verónica; Aravena, Bárbara; Manríquez, Leslie M. E.; Alarcón-Muñoz, Jhonatan; Pino, Juan Pablo; Trevisan, Cristine; Mansilla, Héctor; Hinojosa, Luis Felipe; Muñoz-Walther, Vicente; Rubilar-Rogers, David (2021). "Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile". Nature. 600 (7888): 259–263. Bibcode:2021Natur.600..259S. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1. PMID 34853468. S2CID 244799975.
  3. ^ Madzia, D.; Arbour, V.M.; Boyd, C.A.; Farke, A.A.; Cruzado-Caballero, P.; Evans, D.C. (2021). "The phylogenetic nomenclature of ornithischian dinosaurs". PeerJ. 9: e12362. doi:10.7717/peerj.12362. PMC 8667728. PMID 34966571.
  4. ^ Osborn, H. F. (1923). "Two Lower Cretaceous dinosaurs of Mongolia." American Museum Novitates, 95: 1–10.[1]