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Ankylosauridae
 
 
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An ankylosaurid is a member of the Ankylosauridae family of armored dinosaurs
Thyreophora

The Thyreophora were a subgroup of the ornithischian dinosaurs. They were Armour herbivorous dinosaurs, living from the early Jurassic until the end of the Cretaceous....
 that evolved 125 million years ago (along with another family of ankylosaurs
Ankylosauria

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with Armour in the form of bony osteoderms....
, the Nodosauridae
Nodosauridae

Nodosauridae is a family of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, from the Cretaceous Period of what are now North America, Asia, Australia, Antarctica and Europe....
) and became extinct 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

The Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately , was a large-scale Extinction event of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time....
. Ankylosaurids have been found in western North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
, Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and East Asia
East Asia

East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either Geography or cultural terms. Geography and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km?, or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia as Central Asia....
, though good specimens are rare; most are known only from bone fragments.

heavy armour
Armour (zoology)

Armour in animals is external or superficial protection against attack by predators, formed as part of the body , usually through the hardening of body tissues, outgrowths or secretions....
, forming a veritable shell on the backs of ankylosaurids and their clubbed
Club (zoology)

In zoology, a club is a bony mass at the end of the tail of some dinosaurs and of some mammals, most notably the Ankylosauridae and the glyptodonts....
 tails, makes them look superficially similar to the mammalian glyptodonts
Glyptodontidae

Glyptodonts were large, more heavily-armored relatives of extinct Pampatheriidae and modern armadillos. They first evolved during the Miocene in South America, which remained their Species diversity....
 (and to a lesser degree to the giant meiolaniid
Meiolania

Meiolania is an extinct genus of Cryptodira turtle from the Oligocene to Holocene, with the last relic populations at New Caledonia which survived until 2000 years ago....
 turtles of Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
).

Their heavily armoured heads formed a toothless beak at the front (comparable to modern birds), though the sides of the mouth and the lower jaw did bear small teeth, deeply inset from the jaw.

losaurids usually had a thick armour plating of fused bone, often interspersed with a variety of spikes and lumps.






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An ankylosaurid is a member of the Ankylosauridae family of armored dinosaurs
Thyreophora

The Thyreophora were a subgroup of the ornithischian dinosaurs. They were Armour herbivorous dinosaurs, living from the early Jurassic until the end of the Cretaceous....
 that evolved 125 million years ago (along with another family of ankylosaurs
Ankylosauria

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with Armour in the form of bony osteoderms....
, the Nodosauridae
Nodosauridae

Nodosauridae is a family of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, from the Cretaceous Period of what are now North America, Asia, Australia, Antarctica and Europe....
) and became extinct 65 million years ago during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event

The Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately , was a large-scale Extinction event of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time....
. Ankylosaurids have been found in western North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
, Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 and East Asia
East Asia

East Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either Geography or cultural terms. Geography and geopolitically, it covers about 12,000,000 km?, or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang, and Mongolia as Central Asia....
, though good specimens are rare; most are known only from bone fragments.

Features

The heavy armour
Armour (zoology)

Armour in animals is external or superficial protection against attack by predators, formed as part of the body , usually through the hardening of body tissues, outgrowths or secretions....
, forming a veritable shell on the backs of ankylosaurids and their clubbed
Club (zoology)

In zoology, a club is a bony mass at the end of the tail of some dinosaurs and of some mammals, most notably the Ankylosauridae and the glyptodonts....
 tails, makes them look superficially similar to the mammalian glyptodonts
Glyptodontidae

Glyptodonts were large, more heavily-armored relatives of extinct Pampatheriidae and modern armadillos. They first evolved during the Miocene in South America, which remained their Species diversity....
 (and to a lesser degree to the giant meiolaniid
Meiolania

Meiolania is an extinct genus of Cryptodira turtle from the Oligocene to Holocene, with the last relic populations at New Caledonia which survived until 2000 years ago....
 turtles of Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
).

Their heavily armoured heads formed a toothless beak at the front (comparable to modern birds), though the sides of the mouth and the lower jaw did bear small teeth, deeply inset from the jaw.

Armour

Ankylosaurids usually had a thick armour plating of fused bone, often interspersed with a variety of spikes and lumps. Ankylosaurids were so heavily armored that some advanced species even had armoured eyelids.

Tail

Many ankylosaurids also had an enlarged mass of bone forming a "club" on the end of their tails, made of two enlarged bone lumps. This tail club has traditionally been used to separate ankylosaurids from their close relatives the nodosaurids, although the most primitive ankylosaurids (polocanthines) also lacked tail clubs.

Taxonomy

Two subfamilies are generally recognised. In one paper, Ken Carpenter
Kenneth Carpenter

Kenneth Carpenter is a Paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and author or co-author of a number of books on dinosaurs and Mesozoic life....
 raised Polacanthinae to family status, which is not recognised by other paleontologists.

The Polacanthinae are late Jurassic to early Cretaceous in age and Kirkland observed they appeared to become extinct about the same time a land bridge
Land bridge

A land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, which allows terrestrial animals and plants to cross over and colonise new lands....
 opened between Asia and North America.

Definitions (after Sereno, 2005) : Ankylosauridae : The most inclusive clade containing Ankylosaurus magniventris but not Panoplosaurus
Panoplosaurus

Panoplosaurus means armoured lizard and was the last known nodosaur. Nodosaurs were herbivores that survived for 120 million years. They belonged to the armored ankylosaurian dinosaur group....
 mirus. Ankylosaurinae : The most inclusive clade containing Ankylosaurus magniventris but not Gargoyleosaurus parkpinorum, Minmi
Minmi (dinosaur)

Minmi, named for Minmi Crossing, Australia , is a genus of small ankylosaurian dinosaur that lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 119 to 113 million years ago....
 paravertebra, or Shamosaurus scutatus.

The following uses the ranks from Benton 2004:
  • Infraorder Ankylosauria
    • Family Ankylosauridae
      • Aletopelta
        Aletopelta

        Aletopelta coombsi was an ankylosaurian ornithischian dinosaur whose fossils were found in Southern California.Etymologically, the generic name is composed of the Ancient Greek terms aletes and pelte, meaning, respectively "wandering" and "shield"....
      • Cedarpelta
        Cedarpelta

        Cedarpelta is the most basal known ankylosaurid ankylosaur , based on material recovered from the Lower Cretaceous of North America. The skull lacks extensive cranial ornamentation, a trait which has been interpreted as plesiomorphic for ankylosaurs....
      • Gobisaurus
        Gobisaurus

        Gobisaurus is an ankylosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Ulansuhai Formation of China. The holotype consists of a skull and as yet undescribed postcranial remains....
      • Minotaurasaurus
        Minotaurasaurus

        Minotaurasaurus is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous.It was named in 2009 by Clifford A. Miles and Clark J....
      • Shamosaurus
        Shamosaurus

        Shamosaurus is the name given to a genus of dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous. It was an ankylosaurid dinosaur from Mongolia....
      • Subfamily Ankylosaurinae
        • Ankylosaurus
          Ankylosaurus

          Ankylosaurus is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur, containing one species, A. magniventris. Fossils of Ankylosaurus are found in geologic formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period in western North America....
        • Euoplocephalus
          Euoplocephalus

          Euoplocephalus meaning 'well-armored head' was one of the largest genus of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, at about the size of a small elephant....
        • Nodocephalosaurus
          Nodocephalosaurus

          Nodocephalosaurus is an ankylosaurid ankylosaur from New Mexico. The holotype was recovered from the Upper Cretaceous De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation and consists of an incomplete skull....
        • Pinacosaurus
          Pinacosaurus

          Pinacosaurus is a genus of medium-sized ankylosaur dinosaurs that lived from the late Santonian to the late Campanian faunal stage of the late Cretaceous Period , in Mongolia and People's Republic of China....
        • Saichania
          Saichania

          Saichania is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period . It was found in the Barun Goyot Formation at Khulsan in the Nemegt Basin, southern Mongolia....
        • Shanxia
          Shanxia

          Shanxia is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur that lived during the upper Cretaceous Period. Its fossils were recovered and named after the Shanxi Province of China, and it is known only from scrappy remains found in river deposits....
        • Talarurus
          Talarurus

          Talarurus is a genus of hippopotamus-sized ankylosauridae dinosaur with heavy armour and a club tail. It was named by Evgeny Maleev in 1952....
        • Tarchia
          Tarchia

          Tarchia is a genus of ankylosauridae dinosaur from the late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is currently the geologically youngest known of all the Asian ankylosaurid dinosaurs and is represented by five or more specimens, including two complete skulls and one nearly complete postcranial skeleton....
        • Tianzhenosaurus
          Tianzhenosaurus

          Tianzhenosaurus is a genus of ankylosauridae dinosaur discovered in Tianzhen County, at Kangdailiang near Zhaojiagou Village, in Shanxi Province, China, in the Late Cretaceous Huiquanpu Formation....
        • Tsagantegia
          Tsagantegia

          Tsagantegia is a genus of medium-sized Ankylosauridae dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous Mongolia, during the Cenomanian stage.The holotype specimen , a complete skull, was recovered from the Baynshiree Svita Formation , at the Tsagan-Teg locality, Dzun-Bayan, in the southeastern Gobi Desert, Mongolia....
      • Subfamily Polacanthinae
        • Gargoyleosaurus
          Gargoyleosaurus

          Gargoyleosaurus is both the smallest and the earliest well-known ankylosaur. Its skull measures only in length, and its total body length is an estimated ....
        • Gastonia
          Gastonia (dinosaur)

          Gastonia is a genus of Polacanthinae ankylosauridaeid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of North America, around 125 million years ago. Closely related to Polacanthus, it has a sacral shield and large shoulder spikes....
        • Hoplitosaurus
          Hoplitosaurus

          Hoplitosaurus was a genus of armored dinosaur related to Polacanthus. It was named from a partial skeleton found in the ?Barremian-age Lower Cretaceous Lakota Formation of Custer County, South Dakota....
        • Hylaeosaurus
          Hylaeosaurus

          Hylaeosaurus , from the Ancient Greek words hyle/??? "forest" and saurus/sa???? "lizard", is the most obscure of the three animals used by Sir Richard Owen to first define the new group Dinosauria, in 1842....
        • Mymoorapelta
          Mymoorapelta

          Mymoorapelta is an ankylosaur from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation of western Colorado. The taxon is known from portions of a disarticulated skull, parts of three different skeletons and other postcranial remains....
        • Polacanthus
          Polacanthus

          Polacanthus, deriving its name from the Ancient Greek poly-/p???- "many" and acantha/a?a??a "thorn" or "prickle", was an early armored, spiked, plant-eating ankylosaur from the early Cretaceous period....


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