Thyreophora

Live reconstruction of Stegosaurus

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The Thyreophora (gr. " shield-bearer " ) are a taxon of dinosaur from the group of bird Beck dinosaur ( Ornithischia ). In addition to some basal representatives they include the Stegosauria and Ankylosauria.

Thyreophora are characterized by the bony scales. The basal representatives in longitudinal rows extending, small scales; a double row of plates or spines along the back and tail and at the ankylosauruses developed at the stegosaurs was formed a " armor " made ​​of bony plates.

There were rather cumbersome built animals, except for the basal forms they were quadruped ( on all fours running). All animals were herbivores.

Thyreophora lived from the lower Jurassic to the Upper Cretaceous. The basal representatives came only in the Lower Jurassic, the Stegosauria had its heyday in the Upper Jurassic, but died in the Cretaceous from. The Ankylar culminated in the Upper Cretaceous, before they disappeared through the mass extinction at the end of this period.

The name was proposed in 1915 by the Hungarian paleontologist Franz Baron von Nopcsa for an originally much larger group of dinosaurs and has been used since the mid- 1980s, in the modern sense in the taxonomy.

System

The Thyreophora consist of some basal representatives together ( Scutellosaurus, Emausaurus and Scelidosaurus ) and the Eurypoda ( Stegosauria and Ankylosauria ).

The genera Bienosaurus and Tatisaurus incertae sedis Thyreopora are considered, ie, the finds are too sparse for an accurate systematic mapping.

A possible cladogram of Thyreophora looks like this:

Emausaurus

Scelidosaurus

Stegosauria

Ankylosauria

Scutellosaurus