 Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic ChileSergio Soto-Acuña (),
Alexander O. Vargas (),
Jonatan Kaluza,
Marcelo A. Leppe,
Joao F. Botelho,
José Palma-Liberona,
Carolina Simon-Gutstein,
Roy A. Fernández,
Héctor Ortiz,
Verónica Milla,
Bárbara Aravena,
Leslie M. E. Manríquez,
Jhonatan Alarcón-Muñoz,
Juan Pablo Pino,
Cristine Trevisan,
Héctor Mansilla,
Luis Felipe Hinojosa,
Vicente Muñoz-Walther and
David Rubilar-Rogers
Nature, 2021, vol. 600, issue 7888, 259-263 Abstract: Abstract Armoured dinosaurs are well known for their evolution of specialized tail weapons—paired tail spikes in stegosaurs and heavy tail clubs in advanced ankylosaurs1. Armoured dinosaurs from southern Gondwana are rare and enigmatic, but probably include the earliest branches of Ankylosauria2–4. Here we describe a mostly complete, semi-articulated skeleton of a small (approximately 2 m) armoured dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period of Magallanes in southernmost Chile, a region that is biogeographically related to West Antarctica5. Stegouros elengassen gen. et sp. nov. evolved a large tail weapon unlike any dinosaur: a flat, frond-like structure formed by seven pairs of laterally projecting osteoderms encasing the distal half of the tail. Stegouros shows ankylosaurian cranial characters, but a largely ancestral postcranial skeleton, with some stegosaur-like characters. Phylogenetic analyses placed Stegouros in Ankylosauria; specifically, it is related to Kunbarrasaurus from Australia6 and Antarctopelta from Antarctica7, forming a clade of Gondwanan ankylosaurs that split earliest from all other ankylosaurs. The large osteoderms and specialized tail vertebrae in Antarctopelta suggest that it had a tail weapon similar to Stegouros. We propose a new clade, the Parankylosauria, to include the first ancestor of Stegouros—but not Ankylosaurus—and all descendants of that ancestor. Date: 2021 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:600:y:2021:i:7888:d:10.1038_s41586-021-04147-1 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1 Access Statistics for this article Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper More articles in Nature from Nature |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.