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Concept
Ankylopollexia
Summary
Ankylopollexia is an extinct clade of ornithischian dinosaurs that lived from the Late Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous. It is a derived clade of iguanodontian ornithopods and contains the subgroup Styracosterna. The name stems from the Greek word, “ankylos”, mistakenly taken to mean stiff, fused (in fact the adjective means bent or curved; used of fingers, it can mean hooked), and the Latin word, “pollex”, meaning thumb. Originally described in 1986 by Sereno, a most likely synapomorphic feature of a conical thumb spine defines the clade.
First appearing around 156 million years ago, in the Jurassic, Ankylopollexia became an extremely successful and widespread clade during the Cretaceous, and were found around the world. The group died out at the end of the Maastrichtian. They grew to be quite large, comparable to some carnivorous dinosaurs and they were universally herbivorous.
Ankylopollexians varied greatly in size over the course of their evolution.. Jurassic genus Camptosaurus was small, no more than in length and half a tonne in weight. The largest known ankylopollexian, dating to the late Campanian age (around 70 million years ago), belonged to the hadrosaurid family, and is named Shantungosaurus. It was around to in length and weighed, for the largest individuals, up to .
Primitive ankylopollexians tended to be smaller as compared to the larger, more derived hadrosaurs. There are, however, exceptions to this trend. A single track from a large ornithopod, likely a relative of Camptosaurus, was reported from the Lourinhã Formation, dating to the Jurassic in Portugal. The corresponding animal had an estimated hip height of around , much larger than the contemporary relative Draconyx. The primitive styracosternan Iguanacolossus was named for its distinct robustness and large size, likely around in length. Regarding hadrosaurs, one of the more basal members of Hadrosauroidea, the Chinese genus Bolong, is estimated to have been around . Another exception of this trend is Tethyshadros, a more derived genus of Hadrosauroidea.
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