User:Abyssal/Prehistory of Africa/Prehistory articles/28
Paranthodon (pə-RAN-thə-don) is a genus of extinct stegosaurian dinosaur that lived in South Africa during the Early Cretaceous, approximately 145.5–136.4 million years ago. Discovered in 1845, it was one of the first stegosaurians found. Its only remains, a partial skull and isolated teeth, were found in the Kirkwood Formation. Although Owen initially identified the fragments as those of the pareiasaur Anthodon, after years of storage in the British Museum of Natural History, Broom identified the partial skull as belonging to a different genus, and named the specimen Palaeoscincus africanus. Several years later, Nopcsa, unaware of Broom's new name, similarly concluded that it represented a new taxon, and named the binomial Paranthodon owenii. However, since the Nopcsa's species name was assigned after Broom's, and Broom did not assign a new genus, both names are now synonyms under the current naming, Paranthodon africanus. The genus name was chosen from the Ancient Greek para, "near" and Anthodon, for the originally proposed similarity of the specimens.
In identifying the remains as those of Palaeoscincus, Broom basically classified Paranthodon as an ankylosaurian, a statement backed by the research of Coombs. Nopcsa however, identified the genus as a stegosaurid, which most modern studies agree with. In 1981, the genus was reviewed, and found to be a valid genus of stegosaurid. Paranthodon is one of a few genera found in the Kirkwood Formation; other such taxa include theropods, like Nqwebasaurus; ornithopods; and sauropods, like Algoasaurus. (see more...)