Rhabdodon
Rhabdodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived in Europe approximately 72-69 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous. The genus contains a single species, R. priscus. It is similar in build to a very robust "hypsilophodont", though all modern phylogenetic analyses find this to be an unnatural grouping, and Rhabdodon to be a basal member of Iguanodontia. It was large amongst its relatives, measuring 4 m (13 ft) long and weighing 250 kg (550 lb), with some specimens possibly reaching up to 6 m (20 ft) long.

★Kumiko★ · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- RhabdodontidaePBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ornithopoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Length
- 4 mWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
37 occurrences of Rhabdodon on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
37 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
15 formations
- Marnes Rouges Inférieures Formation4
- Grès à Reptiles Formation4
- Vitoria Formation2
- Grünbach Formation · Gosau Group2
- Grès de Labarre Formation2
- Figuerola Formation · Fontllonga Group2
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The named rock units Rhabdodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 12 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Rhabdodon and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Rhabdodon and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
171 taxa- Dromaeosauridae13 sites
- Dinosauria7 sites
- Nodosauridae7 sites
- Titanosauria7 sites
- Titanosauridae7 sites
- Lepisosteidae6 sites
- Theropoda6 sites
- Foxemys mechinorum5 sites
- Lirainosaurus astibiae5 sites
- Neosuchia5 sites
- Solemys5 sites
- Abelisauridae4 sites
- Ankylosauria4 sites
- Anura4 sites
- Arcovenator4 sites
- Azhdarchidae4 sites
- Eusuchia4 sites
- Gargantuavis philoinos4 sites
- Iberoccitanemys atlanticum4 sites
- Testudines4 sites
- Acynodon iberoccitanus3 sites
- Dortoka3 sites
- Dortoka vasconica3 sites
- Dortokidae3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 35 sites for Rhabdodon, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
30 references- Rhabdodon (Dinosaur: Ornithopoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Aix-en-Provence Basin: 3D-modeling of Rhabdodon skeleton3
- Late Cretaceous vertebrates from the Saint-Chinian area (southern France): a review of previous research and an update on recent finds2
- Taphonomy of the Late Cretaceous dinosaur-bearing beds of the Lano Quarry (Iberian Peninsula)2
- Nouveaux restes de Dinosauriens dans le Crétacé terminal de l'anticlinal de Dreuilhe. État des connaissances dans le domaine sous-pyrénéen [New dinosaur remains in the terminal Cretaceous of the Dreuilhe Anticline. State of knowledge in the sub-Pyrennean domain]2
- Les dinosauriens du Crétacé Supérieur du Midi de la France [The dinosaurs of the Upper Cretaceous of the south of France]2
- The reptile fauna of the Gosau Formation preserved in the Geological Museum of the University of Vienna2
- New and exceptional discovery in the Upper Cretaceous of the Iberian Peninsula: the palaeontological site of ‘‘Lo Hueco’’, Cuenca, Spain1
- New data on the Dromaeosauridae (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of southern France1
- Síntesis del registro fósil de dinosaurios en el Este de la Península Ibérica [Synthesis of the fossil record of dinosaurs in the eastern Iberian Peninsula]1
- Description ostéologique de l'arrière-crâne de Rhabdodon (Dinosauria, Euornithopoda) et implications phylogénetiques [Osteological description of the braincase of Rhabdodon (Dinosauria, Euornithopoda) and phylogenetic implications]1
- Dinosaurs of France1
- The first Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) dinosaur footprints from Transylvania (Romania)1
Each of the 37 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 18 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Rhabdodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ★Kumiko★
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rhabdodon”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itRhabdodontidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Matheron 1869