Cardiodon
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Cardiodon Temporal range: Middle Jurassic |
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| Holotype tooth | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Sauropodomorpha |
| Infraorder: | Sauropoda |
| (unranked): | ?Turiasauria |
| Genus: |
Cardiodon Owen, 1841 |
| Binomial name | |
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Cardiodon rugulosus Owen, 1844 |
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Cardiodon (meaning "heart tooth", in reference to the shape) was a herbivorous genus of sauropod dinosaur, based on a tooth from the late Bathonian-age Middle Jurassic Forest Marble Formation of Wiltshire, England. Historically, it is very obscure and usually referred to Cetiosaurus, but recent analyses suggest that it is a distinct genus, and possibly related to Turiasaurus. Cardiodon was the first sauropod genus named.
Richard Owen named the genus for a now-lost tooth, part of the collection of naturalist Joseph Chaning Pearce, found near Bradford-on-Avon, but did not assign it a specific name at the time. The generic name is derived from Greek καρδία, kardia, "heart", and ὀδών, odon, "tooth", in reference to its heart-shaped profile. A few years later, in 1844, he added the specific name rugulosus, meaning "wrinkled" in Latin.Cardiodon was the first sauropod given a formal name to, though Owen was at the time completely unaware of the sauropod nature of the find.
Within a few decades, he and others were viewing Cardiodon as a possible synonym of his most well-known sauropod genus, Cetiosaurus.Richard Lydekker formalized this view in a roundabout way in 1890, by assigning Cetiosaurus oxoniensis to Cardiodon on the basis of teeth from Oxfordshire associated with a skeleton of C. oxoniensis. He also added a second tooth (BMNH R1527) from the Great Oolite near Cirencester, Gloucestershire. More typically, Cardiodon has been assigned to Cetiosaurus, sometimes as a separate species Cetiosaurus rugulosus, in spite of its priority.
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