Rhabdodontidae

Rhabdodontidae is a family of herbivorous iguanodontian ornithopods, ranging in adult body length from about 1.6 to 6 meters, that are best known from the Late Cretaceous of the European archipelago. Its members include Rhabdodon, Zalmoxes, Mochlodon, Matheronodon, and Transylvanosaurus, though the earliest stem forms appeared as far back as the Early Cretaceous. These were stocky, deep-skulled animals resembling robust iguanodonts, with a simple dentition of spade- or leaf-shaped teeth bearing a distinctive ridge pattern that worked as a powerful scissors-like shear against tough, fibrous island plants. They are also set apart by uniquely shaped femur, humerus, and ulna bones. Isolated on islands within the western Tethyan archipelago, rhabdodontids formed a characteristic element of insular European faunas, with the smaller eastern genera contrasting against the giant western Rhabdodon, before hadrosaurs replaced them as the dominant browsing herbivores near the close of the Cretaceous.