26-581: Rhabdodontidae is a family of herbivorous iguanodontian ornithopod dinosaurs whose earliest stem members appeared in the middle of the Lower Cretaceous . The oldest dated fossils of these stem members were found in the Barremian Castrillo de la Reina Formation of Spain, dating to approximately 129.4 to 125.0 million years ago. With their deep skulls and jaws, Rhabdodontids were similar to large, robust iguanodonts . The family
52-556: A definition followed by Vickaryous, Teresa Maryańska , and Weishampel in 2004. Vickaryous et al. considered two genera of nodosaurids to be of uncertain placement ( incertae sedis ): Struthiosaurus and Animantarx , and considered the most primitive member of the Nodosauridae to be Cedarpelta . Following the publication of the PhyloCode , Nodosauridae needed to be formally defined following certain parameters, including that
78-554: A lack of widespread consensus within the scientific community for extended periods. The continual publication of new data and diverse opinions plays a crucial role in facilitating adjustments and ultimately reaching a consensus over time. The naming of families is codified by various international bodies using the following suffixes: The taxonomic term familia was first used by French botanist Pierre Magnol in his Prodromus historiae generalis plantarum, in quo familiae plantarum per tabulas disponuntur (1689) where he called
104-497: A more stable forested environment. The Late Cretaceous is characterized by a warm temperate climate that extended to the poles, elevated sea levels, and inland seas. With a dentition adapted to shearing vegetation, members of the family Rhabdodontidae were well-suited for life in the lush, vegetative environment at middle latitudes. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Family (biology) Family ( Latin : familia , pl. : familiae )
130-556: A new definition, the most inclusive clade containing Rhabdodon priscus but not Parasaurolophus walkeri . More recently, a morphological diagnosis was proposed, that excluded Muttaburrasaurus , unlike Sereno's definition. The clade Rhabdodontomorpha was coined to contain the larger group. The following cladogram was recovered by Dieudonné and colleagues in 2016: Anabisetia Tenontosaurus Dryomorpha Muttaburrasaurus Vegagete Ornithopod Mochlodon Rhabdodon Zalmoxes Rhabdodontids first appeared during
156-423: A non-pendant, crested fourth trochanter . The humerus lacks a proximal bicipital sulcus, and a concave border between the head and the deltopectoral crest. The ulna has a large olecranon process . There are differing opinions as to the constituents of Rhabdodontidae. Originally they were defined as the last common ancestor of Zalmoxes robustus and Rhabdodon priscus . Later, Paul Sereno proposed
182-591: Is a family of ankylosaurian dinosaurs known from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous periods in what is now Asia, Europe, North America, and possibly South America. While traditionally regarded as a monophyletic clade as the sister taxon to the Ankylosauridae , some analyses recover it as a paraphyletic grade leading to the ankylosaurids. Nodosaurids, like their sister group
208-499: Is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". The delineation of what constitutes a family— or whether a described family should be acknowledged— is established and decided upon by active taxonomists . There are not strict regulations for outlining or acknowledging a family, yet in the realm of plants, these classifications often rely on both the vegetative and reproductive characteristics of plant species. Taxonomists frequently hold varying perspectives on these descriptions, leading to
234-497: Is consistent with their habitat being sheltered from expansive mixing leading to a long period of dominance. Second, the fossil record contains three genera of rhabdodontids – Mochlodon , Zalmoxes , and Rhabdodon – that make up two geographically separated lines in the archipelago. Traditionally, it has been thought Mochlodon and Zalmoxes were insular dwarfs. The smaller sizes of Mochlodon (1.6 to 1.8 m) and Zalmoxes (2.0 to 2.5 m) relative to Rhabdodon (5.0 to 6.0 m) and
260-624: Is defined in the PhyloCode as "the largest clade containing Panoplosaurus mirus , but not Nodosaurus textilis and Struthiosaurus austriacus " while Struthiosaurini has a similar definition of "the largest clade containing Struthiosaurus austriacus , but not Nodosaurus textilis and Panoplosaurus mirus ". Topology A below demonstrates these relationships, following the phylogenetic analyses of Rivera-Sylva and colleagues (2018), with clade names added by definition from Madzia et al. (2021). However, in 2023, Raven and colleagues proposed an alternate phylogeny for nodosaurids; instead of
286-399: Is offset from the midline of the tooth. These ridges also have a specific pattern which is unique to Rhabdodontids: their dentary teeth have a central primary ridge with multiple equally spaced secondary ridges, and their maxillary teeth have no primary ridge and have similarly-sized secondary ridges. Unique characteristics are found in the femur, the humerus, and the ulna bones. The femur has
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#1732772316636312-485: Is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy . It is classified between order and genus . A family may be divided into subfamilies , which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae , but that family
338-658: The Genera Plantarum of George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker this word ordo was used for what now is given the rank of family. Families serve as valuable units for evolutionary, paleontological, and genetic studies due to their relatively greater stability compared to lower taxonomic levels like genera and species. Nodosauridae Acanthopholididae Nopcsa , 1902 Acanthopholidae Nopcsa, 1917 ? Hylaeosauridae Nopcsa, 1902 Palaeoscincidae Nopcsa, 1918 Panoplosauridae Nopcsa, 1929 Struthiosauridae Kuhn, 1966 Nodosauridae
364-653: The Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous, and an extensive fossil record shows that they remained extant until the Maastrichtian stage at the end of the Late Cretaceous. During much of the Late Cretaceous, an isolated island habit in the western Tethyan archipelago contributed to the evolution of rhabdodontids in two main ways. First, the rhabdodontid dentition is relatively primitive, which
390-572: The Maastrichtian period, 72.1–66.0 million years ago, of the Late Cretaceous; this appears to be less to do with competition and more due to changes in the environment, where the browsing rhabdodontids and nodosaurids could not survive while the grazing hadrosaurs could. Titanosaurs coexisted with all of these groups throughout the Maastrichtian. Transylvania is the only location known thus far to have had Rhabdodontids, Nodosaurids, Titanosaurs, and Hadrosaurids all coexisting together, likely due to
416-721: The addition of another internal specifier was deemed unnecessary. Nodosauridae is traditionally composed of the basal clade Polacanthinae (sometimes recovered outside of the Nodosauridae), as well as the Panoplosaurini and Struthiosaurini within the Nodosaurinae . Nodosaurinae is defined in the PhyloCode as "the largest clade containing Nodosaurus textilis , but not Hylaeosaurus armatus , Mymoorapelta maysi , and Polacanthus foxii ". Panoplosaurini
442-541: The ankylosaurids, were heavily armored dinosaurs adorned with rows of bony armor nodules and spines ( osteoderms ), which were covered in keratin sheaths. Nodosaurids, like other ankylosaurians, were small- to large-sized, heavily built, quadrupedal , herbivorous dinosaurs , possessing small, leaf-shaped teeth. Unlike ankylosaurids, nodosaurids lacked mace-like tail clubs, instead having more flexible tail tips. Many nodosaurids had spikes projecting outward from their shoulders. One particularly well-preserved nodosaurid "mummy",
468-540: The family as a rank intermediate between order and genus was introduced by Pierre André Latreille in his Précis des caractères génériques des insectes, disposés dans un ordre naturel (1796). He used families (some of them were not named) in some but not in all his orders of "insects" (which then included all arthropods ). In nineteenth-century works such as the Prodromus of Augustin Pyramus de Candolle and
494-525: The holotype of Borealopelta markmitchelli , preserves a nearly complete set of armor in life position, as well as the keratin covering and mineralized remains of the underlying skin, which indicate reddish pigments in a countershading pattern. The family Nodosauridae was erected by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1890, and anchored on the genus Nodosaurus . The clade Nodosauridae was first informally defined by Paul Sereno in 1998 as "all ankylosaurs closer to Panoplosaurus than to Ankylosaurus ,"
520-410: The island locale that all three genera shared led to the hypothesis of island nanism in the case of the former two. However, Ősi et al. (2012) proposed that Rhabdodon underwent gigantism on the mainland, as opposed to Zalmoxes and Mochlodon experiencing nanism on island habitats. Ösi and colleagues used femur length to estimate body size through evolution in the rhabdodontid lineage. The conclusion
546-575: The seventy-six groups of plants he recognised in his tables families ( familiae ). The concept of rank at that time was not yet settled, and in the preface to the Prodromus Magnol spoke of uniting his families into larger genera , which is far from how the term is used today. In his work Philosophia Botanica published in 1751, Carl Linnaeus employed the term familia to categorize significant plant groups such as trees , herbs , ferns , palms , and so on. Notably, he restricted
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#1732772316636572-413: The type genus Nodosaurus was required as an internal specifier. In formally defining Nodosauridae, Madzia and colleagues followed the previously established use for the clade, defining it as the largest clade including Nodosaurus textilis but not Ankylosaurus magniventris . As all phylogenies referenced included both Panoplosaurus and Nodosaurus within the same group relative to Ankylosaurus ,
598-399: The uniquely shaped femur, humerus, and ulna. Members of Rhabdodontidae have an adult body length of 1.6 to 6.0 meters. Rhabdodontids have a simple dentition with leaf-shaped teeth used for a powerful scissors-like shearing. These teeth are well-suited to a diet hypothesised to have consisted of tough and fibrous plants such as Sabalites and Pandanites . Each tooth has a ridge on it that
624-549: The use of this term solely within the book's morphological section, where he delved into discussions regarding the vegetative and generative aspects of plants. Subsequently, in French botanical publications, from Michel Adanson 's Familles naturelles des plantes (1763) and until the end of the 19th century, the word famille was used as a French equivalent of the Latin ordo (or ordo naturalis ). In zoology ,
650-456: Was first proposed by David B. Weishampel and colleagues in 2003. Rhabdodontid fossils have been mainly found in Europe in formations dating to the Late Cretaceous. The defining characteristics of the clade Rhabdodontidae include the spade-shape of the teeth, the presence of three or more premaxillary teeth, the distinct difference between the two maxillary and dentary teeth ridge patterns, and
676-444: Was that in the eastern lineage comprising Zalmoxes and Mochlodon , the size ranges of both were too close to that of the ancestral rhabdodontid to support the hypothesis of nanism. Ösi and colleagues instead came to the conclusion that Rhabdodon in the western lineage is a case of gigantism in the group Rhabdodontidae. Rhabdodontids and Nodosaurids were replaced by Hadrosaurids as the dominating herbivorous dinosaur group during
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