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| Dracopelta zbyszewskii Galton, 1980 |
Dracopelta (Latin draco = dragon + Greek pelta = small shield) was an ankylosaurian dinosaur from Portugal, described by Peter Galton in 1980. Year 1980 ( MCMLXXX) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar) Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. The dragon is a Legendary creature of which some interpretation or depiction appears in almost every culture worldwide Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Ankylosauria is a group of Herbivorous Dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (República Portuguesa is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Peter Galton is a British vertebrate paleontologist working in America who has to date written or co-written about a hundred papers in scientific jounals or chapters in paleontology When Galton described the only known specimen, he referred it to the Kimmeridgian age (Late Jurassic) of the locality of Ribamar. However, to complicate matters, there are two localities nearby called Ribamar in the Estremadura region of Portugal. Estremadura ((ɨʃtɾɨmɐˈðuɾɐ is a historical Province of Portugal. The first, near Mafra, is dated as Early Cretaceous, and the second, near Lourinhã, as Late Jurassic. Mafra ( pron 'mafɾɐ is both a municipality and a town within the district of Lisbon on the Portuguese west coastin Greater The Early Cretaceous ( timestratigraphic name or the Lower Cretaceous ( logstratigraphic name is the earlier of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous Lourinhã ( pron. lo(wɾi'ɲɐ̃ is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 147 The Late Jurassic (or Malm) Epoch of the Jurassic Period is the unit of geologic time from 161 Antunes and Mateus (2003), considered the Late Jurassic age to be more likely.
The type species was designated D. In Taxonomy, a type species is the species that originally defined a genus. zbyszewskii, in honour of palaeontologist George Zbyszewski.
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Material
The holotype of D. zbyszewsii is a partial skeleton that consists of a rib cage with thirteen dorsal vertebrae and five dermal scutes.
Systematics
Dracopelta was the first ankylosaur recognized from the Late Jurassic and remains one of the most primitive known genera referred to the Ankylosauria. Ankylosauria is a group of Herbivorous Dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. Though originally placed within the Nodosauridae, Vickaryous et al. Nodosauridae is a family of Ankylosaurian Dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period of what are now North America, Asia, (2004) considered Dracopelta Ankylosauria incertae sedis. Ankylosauria is a group of Herbivorous Dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. Incertae sedis ( Latin for "of uncertain placement" abbreviated "inc
Palaeobiology
It's difficult to estimate the animal's size from the fragmentary remains, but it was clearly a small dinosaur, appriximately 2 meters long.
As an ankyliosaur, it was almost certainly an herbivore.
References
- Antunes, M. T. , and Mateus, O. 2003. Dinosaurs of Portugal. Comptes Rendus Palevol 2:77-95
- Galton, P. M. 1980. Partial skeleton of Dracopelta zbyszewskii n. gen. and n. sp. , an ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal. Geobios 13(3):451-457
- Vickaryous, Maryanska, and Weishampel 2004. Geobios is an academic journal published bimonthly by the Dutch publishing house Elsevier. Chapter Seventeen: Ankylosauria. in The Dinosauria (2nd edition), Weishampel, D. B. , Dodson, P. , and Osmólska, H. , editors. University of California Press.
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