a large-toothed rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of France.
Pronunciation: math-uh-ron-o-don
Meaning: Matheron tooth
Author/s: Godefroit
et al. (
2017)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Bouches-du-Rhône, France
Discovery Chart Position: #971
Matheronodon provincialis
(Provençale Matheron Tooth)Etymology
Matheronodon is derived from "Matheron" (for Philippe Matheron who described the first dinosaur fossils from the Provence region of France,
Hypselosaurus, in 1846) and the Greek "odon" (tooth).
Funnily enough,
Hypselosaurus wasn't formally named by Matheron until 1869, alongside the equally Provençale
Rhabdodon, and they both ended up with the same epithet when the ICZN emended the latter from
priscum to
priscus, to match the masculine generic name, in March 1988.
The
species epithet,
provincialis, means "of Provence" (Provençale) in Latin.
ZooBank registry:
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:A6D62068-15A5-4ADE-83DD-74F0ED529BAB.
Discovery
The remains of
Matheronodon were discovered in the Grès à Reptiles Formation (Aix-en-Provence Basin) at Velaux-La Bastide Neuve, Bouches-du-Rhône Department of Provence, southern France, during field campaigns in 2009 and 2012.
The
holotype (MMS/VBN-02-102, housed at the Musée du Moulin Seigneurial in Velaux, France) is a particularly robust upper jaw bone (right maxilla).
Referred material includes three upper jaw teeth (MMS/VBN-93-34, MMS/VBN-09-149a, and MMS/VBN-09-150), one upper jaw tooth crown (MMS/VBN-12-22) and three lower jaw teeth (MMS/VBN-02-11, MMS/VBN-09-43c and MMS/VBN-12-A002). All are extremeny large.
• Matheron PM (1846) "Sur les terrains traversés par le souterrain de la Nerthe, près Marseille".
Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France, 4(2): 261–269.
• Matheron P (1869) "Notice sur les reptiles fossiles des dépôts fulvio-lacustres crétaces du bassin à lignite de Fuveau" [
Note on the fossil reptiles from the fluvio-lacustrine deposits of the Fuveau lignite basin].
Memoires de L'Academie Impériale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Marseilles, Série 2, 26: 781-795. [English translation by Emile M. Moacdieh, University of Michigan, 2011.]
• ICZN (1988) "
Rhabdodon Matheron, 1869 (Reptilia, Ornithischia): Conserved. Opinion 1483.
Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, 45: 85-86.
• Weishampel DB, Barrett PM, Coria RA, Le Loeuff J, Xu X, Zhao X, Sahni A, Gomani EMP and Noto CR (2004) "Dinosaur Distribution". Page 590 in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska (eds.) "
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• Godefroit P, Garcia G, Gomez B, Stein K, Cincotta A, Lefèvre U and Valentin X (2017) "Extreme tooth enlargement in a new Late Cretaceous rhabdodontid dinosaur from Southern France".
Scientific Reports, 7(1): 13098. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13160-2.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
MATHERONODON :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/MATHERONODON›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
