article for May 11, 2019
Article of the day for May 11, 2019 is Paranthodon . Paranthodon was a stegosaurian dinosaur that lived in present-day South Africa between 139 and 131 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. Discovered in 1845, it was one of the first stegosaurians found. The only remains of the genus, a partial skull, isolated teeth, and fragments of vertebrae, were found in the Kirkwood Formation. British paleontologist Richard Owen initially identified the fragments as those of the pareiasaur Anthodon. After remaining untouched for years in the British Museum of Natural History, the partial skull was identified by South African paleontologist Robert Broom as belonging to a different genus; he named the specimen Palaeoscincus africanus. Several years later, Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa, unaware of Broom's new name, similarly concluded that it represented a new taxon, and named it Paranthodon owenii. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek para (near) with the genus name Anth...
