Priconodon
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Priconodon Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, 113 Ma |
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| Priconodon tooth in multiple views | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Sauropsida |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Ornithischia |
| Suborder: | Thyreophora |
| Infraorder: | Ankylosauria |
| Family: | ?Nodosauridae |
| Genus: | Priconodon |
| Species: | P. crassus |
| Binomial name | |
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Priconodon crassus Marsh, 1888 |
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Priconodon is an extinct genus of dinosaur (perhaps nodosaurid), known from its large teeth. Its remains have been found in the Aptian-Albian age Lower Cretaceous Arundel Formation of Muirkirk, Prince George's County, Maryland, USA.
O. C. Marsh named the genus for USNM 2135, a large worn tooth from what was then called the Potomac Formation. As ankylosaurians were by and large unknown at the time, he compared it to Diracodon (=Stegosaurus) teeth. It was not identified as an ankylosaurian until Walter Coombs assigned it to Nodosauridae in 1978.
In 1998 Kenneth Carpenter and James Kirkland, in a review of North American Lower Cretaceous ankylosaurs, considered it tentatively valid as an unusually large nodosaurid, larger than all those described before. Carpenter (2001) retained it as a valid nodosaurid, but did not employ it in his phylogenetic analysis. Vickaryous et al. (2004), in a review of armored dinosaurs, considered it to be dubious without comment. West and Tibert, however, followed this with a preliminary account of a morphometric study that found it to be a unique genus.
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