a nodosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Austria.
Pronunciation: RAH-din-o-SOR-us
Meaning: Slender lizard
Author/s: Seeley (
1881)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Niederösterreich, Austria
Discovery Chart Position: #59
Rhadinosaurus alcinus
(Slender lizard)Etymology
Rhadinosaurus is derived from the Greek "rhadinos" (slender) and "sauros" (lizard), in reference to its slender limb bones.
The
species epithet,
alcinus, is a mystery. Our best guess, is that it's derived from "Alca" (from the Norwegian "alke": a genus of sea birds with slender bills, commonly known as "aucs") and the Latin "-inus (pertaining too), not because it had a bill, but to hammer home the slender thing.
Discovery
The remains of
Rhadinosaurus were discovered in the Grünbach Formation of the Lower Gosau Group (previously the "Gosou Formation") at Muthmannsdorf Village, near the town of Weiner Neustadt, in the Neue Welt area of Niederösterreich ("Lower Austria"—the largest state in Austria), by Edward Suess and Bergverwalter Pawlowitsch in 1870.
In 1881, Seeley stated: "I found this genus upon the femora, which are quite distinct from any thing hitherto discovered", which they would've been.. if they were actually thighs! They were reidentified as fibulae by Pereda Suberbiola and Galton in 2001, so the
holotype (PIUW 2349/34) is a pair of calf bones. Seeley also mentioned two upper arm bones, one of which was reidentified as a shin fragment (PIUW 2348/35) and referred to
Zalmoxes sp. by Sachs and Hornung in 2006, and two back vertebrae, but noted "there is no proof beyond similarity of character that they belong to the same species" and "there is no evidence of natural association".
• Seeley HG (1881) "
The reptile fauna of the
Gosau Formation preserved in the Geological
Museum of the University of Vienna".
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 37(148): 620-707. DOI: 10.1144/GSL.JGS.1881.037.01-04.4.
• Nopcsa BF (1915) "Die dinosaurier der Siebenbürgischen landesteile Ungarns [
Dinosaurs of the Transylvanian province in Hungary]".
Mitteilungen aus dem Jahrbuche der Kgl. Ungarischen Geologischen Reichsanstalt, 23: 1-24.
• Pereda Suberbiola X and Galton PM (2001) "Reappraisal of the nodosaurid ankylosaur
Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel from the Upper Cretaceous Gosau Beds of Austria". Page 173-210 in Carpenter (ed.) "
The Armored Dinosaurs".
• Sachs S and Hornung J (2006) "Juvenile ornithopod (Dinosauria: Rhabdodontidae) remains from the Upper Cretaceous (Lower Campanian, Gosau Group) of Muthmannsdorf (Lower Austria)". Geobios, 39(3): 415-425.
DOI: 10.1016/j.geobios.2005.01.003.
• Hofer G, Wagreich M, Draganits E, Neuhuber S, Grundtner ML and Bottig M (2011)
"
Stratigraphy and geochemical charaterisation of Upper Cretaceous non-marine — marine cycles (Grünbach Formation, Gosau Group, Austria)".
Austrian Journal of Earth Sciences, 104(2): 90-107.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
RHADINOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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http://www.dinochecker.com/dinosaurs/RHADINOSAURUS›. Web access: 06th Mar 2026.
