Ankylosaurids Temporal range: Early Cretaceous - Late Cretaceous,
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Mounted skeleton of Scolosaurus thronus, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Clade: | †Ornithischia |
Clade: | †Thyreophora |
Clade: | †Ankylosauria |
Clade: | †Euankylosauria |
Family: | †Ankylosauridae Brown, 1908 |
Type species | |
†Ankylosaurus magniventris Brown, 1908
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Subgroups | |
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Synonyms | |
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Ankylosauridae (/ˌæŋkɪloʊˈsɔːrɪdiː/) is a family of armored dinosaurs within Ankylosauria, and is the sister group to Nodosauridae. The oldest known Ankylosaurids date to around 122 million years ago and went extinct 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[2] These animals were mainly herbivorous and were obligate quadrupeds, with leaf-shaped teeth and robust, scute-covered bodies. Ankylosaurids possess a distinctly domed and short snout, wedge-shaped osteoderms on their skull, scutes along their torso, and a tail club.[3]
Ankylosauridae is exclusively known from the northern hemisphere, with specimens found in western North America, Europe, and East Asia. The first discoveries within this family were of the genus Ankylosaurus, by Peter Kaiser and Barnum Brown in Montana in 1906.[4] Brown went on to name Ankylosauridae and the subfamily Ankylosaurinae in 1908.
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