''Rhadinosaurus'' (meaning "slender lizard") is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

nodosaurid Nodosauridae is a family of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous period in what is now North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Description Nodosaurids, like their close relatives the ankylosaurids, wer ...

ankylosaur Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with armor in the form of bony osteoderms, similar to turtles. Ankylosaurs were bulky quadrupeds, with short, powerful limbs. ...

first described in 1881 by

Harry Govier Seeley Harry Govier Seeley (18 February 1839 – 8 January 1909) was a British paleontologist. Early life Seeley was born in London on 18 February 1839, the second son of Richard Hovill Seeley, a goldsmith, and his second wife Mary Govier. When his fat ...

, based on remains uncovered in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

sometime between 1859 and 1870 by Edward Suess and Pawlowitsch. It was a

herbivore A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...

that lived around 84.9 to 70.6 million years ago (during the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

). The type species is ''R. alcimus''.

Fossils

The ''Rhadinosaurus'' hypodigm (

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

) consists of one tibia fragment, one limb fragment, two

fibulae The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...

, and two dorsal

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates,Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristic ...

e. The fibulae (PIUW 2349/34), which are clearly ankylosaurian, were originally identified as femora in the original description, but were eventually re-identified in a 2001 review of ankylosaur specimens from the

Grünbach Formation The Grünbach Formation is an Austrian geological formation that dates to the lower Campanian age of the Late Cretaceous. it forms part of the Gosau Group, and represents a marine regression event, representing a coastal/brackish environment, bein ...

.X. Pereda Suberbiola and P. M. Galton. 2001. Reappraisal of the nodosaurid ankylosaur Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel from the Upper Cretaceous Gosau Beds of Austria. In K. Carpenter (ed.), The Armored Dinosaurs. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 173-210 Sachs and Hornung (2006) re-identified one of the putative humeral bones (PIUW 2348/35) as a tibial fragment of an rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur, referring it to ''

Zalmoxes ''Zalmoxes'' is an extinct genus of rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur from the Maastrichtian of Romania. The genus is known from specimens first named as the species '' Mochlodon robustum'' in 1899 by Franz Nopcsa before being reclassified as ...

'' sp.

Taxonomy

''Rhadinosaurus'' was initially classified as a dinosaur of uncertain position, and later considered an ornithosuchid as well as possible synonym of ''

Doratodon ''Doratodon'' is an extinct genus of Late Cretaceous ziphodont crocodylomorph that was once believed to be a dinosaur,Company, J., Suberbiola, X.P., Ruiz-Omeñaca, J.I. & Buscalioni, A.D. (2005). A new species of ''Doratodon'' (Crocodyliformes: Z ...

'', until

Franz Nopcsa Franz may refer to: People * Franz (given name) * Franz (surname) Places * Franz (crater), a lunar crater * Franz, Ontario, a railway junction and unorganized town in Canada * Franz Lake, in the state of Washington, United States – see ...

introduced the now popular theory that classifies it as a probable synonym of ''

Struthiosaurus ''Struthiosaurus'' (Latin ''struthio'' = ostrich + Greek ''sauros'' = lizard) is a genus of nodosaurid dinosaurs, from the Late Cretaceous period (Santonian-Maastrichtian) of Austria, Romania, France and Hungary in Europe.

''.Steel, R. (1973). Handbuch der Paleoherpetologie. Vol. 16: Crocodilia. Fischer-Verlag, Portland, Oregon. 116pp.

References

Campanian life Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of Europe Cretaceous Austria Fossils of Austria Fossil taxa described in 1881 Taxa named by Harry Seeley Nomina dubia Ornithischian genera {{ankylosaur-stub