Day 179#: Nodocephalosaurus kirtlandensis
Merry day eight of Dino-December! Today's animal of the day is Nodocephalosaurus kirtlandensis!
Image credit: José Carlos Cortés
Meaning "knob-headed lizard", Nodocephalosaurus kirtlandensis was a species of ankylosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now New Mexico. It was discovered in 1995 by a team of paleontologists who were working on excavating a newly discovered Parasaurolophus specimen in the Kirtland Formation of New Mexico, and found the partial skull of Nodocephalosaurus sticking out of some nearby mudstone. Due to time constraints, the skull was sadly left behind and wouldn't be properly unearthed until a year later. Then, in 1999, it was finally formally named and described by Robert M. Sullivan, one of the original paleontologists on the team that stumbled upon it.
Image credit: cisiopurple on DeviantArt
This fragmentary skull is currently the only fossil we know of for Nodocephalosaurus, but by comparing the skull to those of other closely related ankylosaurids, paleontologists estimate that Nodocephalosaurus would have been around 15 ft long and weighed around 1.65 tons. Analysis of its skull suggests that Nodocephalosaurus and its close relative from Utah, Akainacephalus, were more closely related to various Asian ankylosaurs than they were to the other ankylosaurids native to North America. Because of this, paleontologists think that Nodocephalosaurus and Akainacephalus are probably the descendants of Asian ankylosaurs that migrated to North America sometime during the Cretaceous period. Nodocephalosaurus would have lived in either a temperate or subtropical floodplain environment with lots of coniferous trees, ferns, and flowering plants for it to eat. In addition to the aforementioned Parasaurolophus, it would have lived alongside another species of ankylosaurid called Ziapelta, as well as many other dinosaurs like Pentaceratops, Sphaerotholus, Saurornitholestes, and several different varieties of hadrosaurs.
