Name:
Cedarpelta
(Cedar shield - after the Cedar Mountain Formation).
Phonetic: See-dar-pel-tah.
Named By: K. Carpenter, J. I. Kirkland,
D. Birge & J. Bird - 2001.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Thyreophora, Ankylosauria, Ankylosauridae.
Species: C. bilbeyhallorum
(type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Unknown due to lack of remains, but skull is
roughly estimated to have been about 60 centimetres long.
Known locations: USA, Utah - Cedar Mountain
Formation, Mussentuchit Member.
Time period: Aptian/Albian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Two partial skulls, one
disarticulated. Possible post cranial remains as well.
Cedarpelta
is
not a particularly famous ankylosaurid
dinosaur, and it does not have
a huge amount of fossils attributed to it. However it was the first
ankylosaurid genera where a skull was found disarticulated (broken up
during fossilisation). This might initially sound like a bad
thing, but usually ankylosaurid skulls are found articulated, which
can make it very difficult for palaeontologists to examine the
individual bones of the skull without deliberately damaging a rare and
valuable fossil specimen. The disarticulated skull, alongside the
fully articulated one which is the genus holotype, has allowed for a
far greater study into the construction of the skulls of these kinds of
dinosaurs.
Aside
from the skulls, the
describers also described a list of ankylosaurid fossils that may also
belong to Cedarpelta. Details about total size
and layout of armour
still remain hard to establish about Cedarpelta.
Like all other
dinosaurs of its kind however, Cedarpelta would
have been a fairly
squat quadrupedal dinosaur that specialised in foraging for low growing
vegetation.
Cedarpelta
would have likely
shared its habitat with other armoured dinosaurs such as Animantarx
and
Peloroplites,
both of which are also known from the same Fossil
member as Cedarpelta. Gastonia
is also present in
the Cedar Mountain
Formation, and Sauropelta
has also been speculated to be there,
though those fossils might belong to Peloroplites.
The original
description of Cedarpelta by Carpenter et al. in
2001 suggested
that Cedarpelta may be a close relative of the
Asian ankylosaurs
Shamosaurus
and Gobisaurus,
and although this has been questioned in
the past, further fossils discoveries have re-confirmed this idea.
Further reading
- Disarticulated skull of a new primitive ankylosaurid from the Lower
Cretaceous of Utah. in Carpenter, K. (editor) 2001, K.
Carpenter, J. I. Kirkland, D. Birge & J. Bird
- 2001.
- Ankylosaurs from the Price River Quarries, Cedar Mountain
Formation (Lower Cretaceous), east-central Utah, Kenneth
Carpenter, Jeff Bartlett, John Bird & Reese Barrick -
2008.