Open Paleo

Ankylosauridae

Brown, 1908 Type genus Ankylosaurus

Its genera lived 125.8–66.0 million years ago Early Cretaceous–Late Cretaceous
Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous stages

Ankylosauridae is a family of armored dinosaurs within Ankylosauria, traditionally one of its two major clades alongside the Nodosauridae (Arbour and Currie, 2015). Its members were mainly herbivorous, obligate quadrupeds with leaf-shaped teeth and robust, scute-covered bodies, distinguished by a short, deeply domed snout bearing wedge-shaped cranial osteoderms and, in more derived forms, a heavy bony tail club built from interlocking tail vertebrae and enlarged, bulbous armor. The family is restricted to Asia and North America, with no evidence of ankylosaurids in Gondwana (Arbour and Currie, 2015). It ranges from the Early Cretaceous, with Aptian forms such as Liaoningosaurus and Shamosaurus among its earliest members, to the end-Cretaceous extinction. Arbour and Currie (2015) recover Shamosaurinae, the small Asian group of Gobisaurus and Shamosaurus, as the sister group of the more diverse and derived Ankylosaurinae.

Diagnosis

  1. Lateral temporal fenestrae closed by cranial ornamentation
  2. Skull wider than long with an anteroposteriorly arched roof
  3. Nasal process of the premaxilla not visible on the skull roof
  4. Three sacral vertebrae
  5. Triangular caudal osteoderms; a handle-and-knob tail club in derived members

Clades within Ankylosauridae

Genera placed directly in Ankylosauridae

  • Aletopelta Ford & Kirkland, 2001 Campanian (83.6–72.2 Ma)United States
  • Cedarpelta Carpenter et al., 2001 Aptian–Albian (121.4–100.5 Ma)United States
  • Chuanqilong Han et al., 2014 Aptian (121.4–113.2 Ma)China
  • Huaxiazhoulong Zhu et al., 2025 Campanian (83.6–72.2 Ma)China
  • Liaoningosaurus Xu et al., 2001 Barremian (125.8–121.4 Ma)China
  • Maleevus Nomen dubium Tumanova, 1987 Cenomanian–Santonian (100.5–83.6 Ma)Mongolia

References

  1. Brown, B. (1908). The Ankylosauridae, a new family of armored dinosaurs from the Upper Cretaceous. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 24: 187-201. American Museum of Natural History.

    Named the family Ankylosauridae.

    brown1908a
  2. Arbour, V. M.; Currie, P. J. (2015). Systematics, phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of the ankylosaurid dinosaurs. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 14(5): 385-444. Informa UK Limited. doi:10.1080/14772019.2015.1059985

    Revised Ankylosauridae, restricting it to Asia and North America and recovering Shamosaurinae as the sister group of Ankylosaurinae.

    arbour2015a