| Mochlodon | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Cranial remains ofMochlodon vorosi | |
Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | †Ornithischia |
| Clade: | †Ornithopoda |
| Family: | †Rhabdodontidae |
| Genus: | †Mochlodon Seeley, 1881 |
| Type species | |
| †Iguanodon suessi Bunzel, 1871 | |
| Species | |
| Synonyms | |
Mochlodon is agenus ofrhabdodontiddinosaurs from theLate Cretaceous ofAustria andHungary. It lived during theLate Cretaceous (85-80 Ma) and twospecies are known:M. suessi andM. vorosi.
In 1859 coal mine administrator Pawlowitsch notified theUniversity of Vienna that some fossils had been found in theGute Hoffnung mine at Muthmannsdorf inAustria. A team headed by geologistsEduard Suess andFerdinand Stoliczka subsequently uncovered numerous bones of several species, among them those of aeuornithopod dinosaur. Stored at the university museum, the finds remained undescribed until they were studied byEmanuel Bunzel from 1870 onwards.[1] Bunzel in 1871 named the euornithopod a new species ofIguanodon:Iguanodon suessii.[2] Thespecific name honours Suess and is today more often spelledsuessi. In 1881Harry Govier Seeley named a separate genus:Mochlodon.[3] The generic name is derived from Greekmokhlos, "bar", andodon, "tooth", a reference to the bar-like median ridge on the teeth. Thetype species isMochlodon suessi.Mochlodon andStruthiosaurus, the latter found at the same site, are so far the only dinosaur genera named from Austrian finds.
Thetype specimen PIUW 2349 was found in theGrünbach Formation of theGosau Group dating from the LowerCampanian, about 80 million years old. It consists of adentary, twovertebrae (presently lost), a parietal, a scapula, an ulna, a manualungual, a femur and a tibia. Bunzel did not assign aholotype. In 2005 the dentary was chosen as thelectotype.
At the end of the nineteenth century BaronFranz Nopcsa noted the similarity of fossils found inRomania to both the FrenchRhabdodon and the AustrianMochlodon. In 1899 he named some of theseMochlodon inkeyi, the specific name honouringBéla Inkey, but the same year changed the name intoRhabdodon inkeyi. In 1900 Nopcsa named some Romanian remainsMochlodon robustum[4] (emended toM. robustus in 1990 by George Olshevsky). In 1915 however, he concluded that all this material could be referred toRhabdodon, the Austrian remains toRhabdodon priscus. In later years,Mochlodon was often considered anomen dubium. In 2003, whenM. robustus was renamedZalmoxes,Mochlodon was tentatively reinstated as a separate genus for the speciesMochlodon suessi. In 2005 a study concluded that no unique derived features,autapomorphies, could be established forMochlodon in relation toZalmoxes, assigning the Austrian remains provisionally to aZalmoxes sp.; a definite identification would giveMochlodon nomenclatural priority.[5]
A second species,M. vorosi, was described from theSantonian agedCsehbánya Formation ofHungary in 2012.[6][7]
Based on analysis of its tooth wear patterns,M. vorosi partitioned resources with the contemporaryankylosaurHungarosaurus by eating tougher vegetation than the latter, as its crowns wore down at more than twice the rate of the crowns of thethyreophoran.[8]
