Abstract
Nodosaurids are poorly known from the Lower Cretaceous of Europe. Two associated ankylosaur skeletons excavated from the lower Albian carbonaceous member of the Escucha Formation near Ariño in northeastern Teruel, Spain reveal nearly all the diagnostic recognized character that define nodosaurid ankylosaurs. These new specimens comprise a new genus and species of nodosaurid ankylosaur and represent the single most complete taxon of ankylosaur from the Cretaceous of Europe. These two specimens were examined and compared to all other known ankylosaurs. Comparisons of these specimens document that Europelta carbonensis n. gen., n. sp. is a nodosaur and is the sister taxon to the Late Cretaceous nodosaurids Anoplosaurus, Hungarosaurus, and Struthiosaurus, defining a monophyletic clade of European nodosaurids– the Struthiosaurinae.
Highlights
Ankylosaurs were first described from the Lower Cretaceous of England with Hylaeosaurus armatus (Valanginian) described in 1833 [1,2,3]
Diagnosis Nodosaurid ankylosaurs that share a combination of characters including: narrow predentaries; a nearly horizontal, unfused quadrates that are oriented less than 30u from the skull roof, and condyles that are 3 times transversely wider than long; premaxillary teeth and dentary teeth that are near the predentary symphysis; dorsally arched sacra; an acromion process dorsal to midpoint of the scapula-coracoid suture; straight ischia, with a straight dorsal margin; relatively long slender limbs; a sacral shield of armor; and erect sacral armor with flat bases
Etymology The specific name ‘‘carbonensis’’ from the coal, is in honor of access to the fossil locality in the Santa Marıa coal mine provided by Sociedad Anonima Minera Catalano-Aragonesa (SAMCA Group), which has been extracting coal in Arino (Teruel) since 1919
Summary
Ankylosaurs were first described from the Lower Cretaceous of England with Hylaeosaurus armatus (Valanginian) described in 1833 [1,2,3]. First mentioned in an anonymous article in the September 16th 1865 issue of the ‘‘The Illustrated London News’’ by Sir Richard Owen [6], the Early Cretaceous (Barremian) Polacanthus was not described formally as Polacanthus foxii by Hulke until 1882 [7,8,9,10]. In 1867, Huxley described the fragmentary Acanthopholis from the base of the Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) [13,14,15]. In 1879, Seeley [16] described the juvenile nodosaurid Anoplosaurus curtonotus [17] from the uppermost Lower Cretaceous (upper Albian) Cambridge Greensand. Subsequent descriptions of the fragmentary remains of ankylosaurs from the Early Cretaceous of Europe have been tentatively assigned to the genus Polacanthus [18]
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