STRUTHIOSAURUS
a plant-eating nodosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Austria.
Pronunciation: STROOTH-ee-o-SOR-us
Meaning: Ostrich lizard
Author/s: Bunzel (
1871)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Muthmannsdorf, Austria
Discovery Chart Position: #34
Struthiosaurus austriacus
(Austrian Ostrich Lizard)Etymology
Struthiosaurus is derived from the Greek "strouthion" (ostrich) and "sauros" (lizard), so-named by Bunzel who thought a skull bone, which at the time represented the entirety of its remains, "resembled that of a bird". So convinced was he that it represented an entirely new type of predator, no less, that he raised an all new family to house it; Ornithocephala ("Bird Heads"). Nopcsa was the first to realise that
Struthiosaurus was an armoured dinosaur as he assigned it to Acanthopholididae in 1902 (correcting the name to Acanthopholidae in 1928). Walter Coombs identified it as a nodosaurid in 1978.
The
species epithet,
austriacus, means "native to Austria" in Latin.
Discovery
The first remains of
Struthiosaurus were discovered in the Grünbach Formation (Lower Gosau Group) at the Gute Hoffnung coal mine, Muthmannsdorf, near Weiner Neustadt, Niederosterreich, Austria, by Eduard Suess and Ferdinand Stoliczka in 1855. The remains that would become
Mochlodon suessi were discovered by the same chaps at the same site.
The
holotype (PIWU 2349/6) is a partial skull.
All
Struthiosaurus synonyms were discovered at Muthmannsdorf too.
Danubiosaurus anceps (Bunzel, 1871)
Crataeomus lepidophorus (Seeley, 1881)
Crataeomus pawlowitschii (Seeley, 1881))
Pleuropeltis suessii (Seeley, 1881)
Hoplosaurus ischyrus? (Seeley 1881)
Rhadinosaurus alcimus? (Seeley 1881)
Leipsanosaurus noricus (Nopcsa, 1918)
Rhodanosaurus ludguensis? (Nopsca, 1929)
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Cretaceous
Stage: Campanian-Maastrichtian
Age range: 84-66 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: 4 meters
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: 400 Kg
Diet: Herbivore
Struthiosaurus
austriacus
Other Species
Struthiosaurus transylvanicus — "native to Transylvania" — (Nopcsa, 1915)
Struthiosaurus languedocensis — "from Languedoc" — (Garcia and Pereda-Suberbiola, 2003)
References
• Bunzel E (1870) "Notice of a Fragment of a Reptilian Skull from the Upper Cretaceous of Grünbach".
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 26(1-2): 394. DOI: 10.1144/GSL.JGS.1870.026.01-02.35.
• Bunzel E (1871) "Die Reptilfauna der Gosauformation in der Neuen Welt bei Wiener-Neustadt".
Abhandlungen der Kaiserlich-Königlichen Geologischen Reichsanstalt 5: 1-18.
• Seeley HG (1881) "The Reptile Fauna of the Gosau Formation preserved in the Geological Museum of the University of Vienna" (with a Note on the Geological Horizon of the Fossils at Neue Welt, west of Wiener Neustadt, by Edw. Suess, Ph.D., F.M.G.S., &c., Professor of Geology in the University of Vienna, &c).
Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 37(1-4): 620-707. DOI: 10.1144/GSL.JGS.1881.037.01-04.49..
• Nopcsa F (1918) "
Leipsanosaurus n. gen. ein neuer thyreophore aus der Gosau".
Földtani Közlöny 48: 324-328.
• Pereda-Suberbiola X and Galton PM (1994) "A revision of the cranial features of the dinosaur
Struthiosaurus austriacus BUNZEL (Ornithischia: Ankylosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Europe".
Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Palaontologie-
Abhandlungen 191(3): 173-200.
• Pereda-Suberbiola X and Galton PM (2001) "Reappraisal of the nodosaurid ankylosaur
Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel, 1871 from the Upper Cretaceous Gosau Beds of Austria". Page 173-210 in Carpenter (ed.) "
The Armored Dinosaurs".
• Garcia G and Suberbiola XP (2003) "A new species of
Struthiosaurus (Dinosauria, Ankylosauria) from the upper cretaceous of Villeveyrac, Southern France".
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 23(1): 156-165. DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634(2003)23[156:ANSOSD]2.0.CO;2.
• Vickaryous MK, Maryanska T and Weishampel DB (2004) "Ankylosauria" in Weishampel, Dodson and Osmólska "
The Dinosauria: Second Edition".
• ?si A (2015) "
The European ankylosaur record: a review".
Hantkeniana, 10: 89-106.
• Schade M, Stumpf S, Kriwet J, Kettler C and Pfaff C (2022)
"Neuroanatomy of the nodosaurid
Struthiosaurus austriacus (Dinosauria: Thyreophora) supports potential ecological differentiations within Ankylosauria".
Scientific Reports, 12: 144. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-03599-9.
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"
STRUTHIOSAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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