ZALMOXES

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

Ben announced...

-----------------------
Weishampel, D.B., Jianu, C.-M., Csiki, Z., and Norman, 
D.B. 2003. Osteology and phylogeny of Zalmoxes (n.g.), an 
unusual euornithopod dinosaur from the latest Cretaceous of 
Romania. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 1 (2)  (June, 
2003)
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Presumably this is the new generic name for _Rhabdodon 
robustus_. Norman spoke about this at SVPCA Portsmouth 
and described the skull morphology in depth. It is a 
dryosaur-grade iguanodontian (with the same 'stepped' 
caudal border to the predentary seen in dryosaurs) trying to 
be a psittacosaur (ish). Lacks an obturator proc BTW.

Incidentally here at UOP Sasi Khansubha currently has the 
Belfast valdosaur material on loan. This is Wessex Fm IoW 
material but was sold to Belfast following a series of 
peculiar goings on (the specimen was found by Gavin Leng 
[of _Eotyrannus lengi_ fame] who is pictured with it in 
some newspaper articles). It was described by Richard 
Twitchett (unpublished thesis) as the new species _V. 
dextrapoda_, later published accidentally by Bill Blows 
(1998) in a faunal list. I've mentioned this before, but some 
of the IoW valdosaur material is big; from animals the same 
size as _Iguanodon atherfieldensis_. And it's for this reason 
most of the material sits in collections labelled as 
_Iguanodon_ (along with assorted Wealden camptosaurs, 
rhabdomorphans and basal hadrosaurs;)).

Which brings me on to something else. Most people 
working on iguanodontian phylogeny find that _I. 
atherfieldensis_ and _I. bernissartensis_ do not group 
together, but are well apart with _I. bernissartensis_ closer 
to hadrosaurs. This begs the question: when is someone 
going to give _I. atherfieldensis_ its own genus?

[Prior to Charig & Chapman's (1998) suggested designation 
of _I. bernissartensis_ as the type species for _Iguanodon_, 
Greg Paul had mentioned his plans to give _I. 
bernissartensis_ its own genus (this is cited in the 1991 
edition of Mesozoic Meanderings I believe)]

-- 
Darren Naish
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth UK, PO1 3QL

email: darren.naish@port.ac.uk
tel: 023 92846045