Parankylosauria

Parankylosauria is a group of armored dinosaurs that inhabited the Southern Hemisphere during the Cretaceous period. First proposed as a distinct clade in 2021, they are thought to be an early diverging branch of the ankylosaur lineage. While most ankylosaurs are found in the Northern Hemisphere, ankylosaur discoveries in the Southern hemisphere are rare and often fragmentary. They have been found in South America, Antarctica, and Australia, which were partially united into the supercontinent of Gondwana at the time. The 2018 discovery of a relatively complete skeleton later named as the genus Stegouros was a key development in understanding the evolutionary link between Gondwanan ankylosaurs.

Parankylosauria

Alexander Vargas · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AnkylosauriaPBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Ornithischia
Life habit
ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia

Time the record covers

At least 28 million years on record.

The record covers at least 100.5 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 106.3 Mya to 66 Mya.

Early Cretaceous — about 2 of 7 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 5 of 7 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 7 occurrences107–106 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences106–104 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences104–103 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences103–102 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences102–100 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences85–83 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences83–82 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences82–81 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences81–79 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences79–78 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences78–76 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences76–75 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences75–74 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences74–72 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences71–69 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.8 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences100.5 Mya72.2 Mya107.1 Mya65.2 Mya

7 occurrences of Parankylosauria on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

7 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

4 formations

La Colonia — 42.95°S, 67.55°WLa Colonia — 42.96°S, 67.51°WToolebuc — 20.87°S, 143.58°EToolebuc — 23.12°S, 140.58°ESnow Hill Island — 63.93°S, 57.81°WDorotea — 50.71°S, 72.54°W

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The named rock units Parankylosauria has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Parankylosauria and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Parankylosauria and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

31 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Parankylosauria, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

6 references

Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Parankylosauria

Credit
Alexander Vargas
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Parankylosauria was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAnkylosauria through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Soto-Acuña et al. 2021