Acantholipan
Extinct genus of dinosaurs
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Acantholipan is a genus of herbivorous nodosaurid dinosaur from Mexico from the early Santonian age of the Late Cretaceous. It includes one species, Acantholipan gonzalezi.[1]
| Acantholipan Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, | |
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| Life restoration based on Sauropelta, a possible relative | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Clade: | †Ornithischia |
| Clade: | †Thyreophora |
| Clade: | †Ankylosauria |
| Family: | †Nodosauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Nodosaurinae |
| Genus: | †Acantholipan Rivera-Sylva et al., 2018 |
| Type species | |
| †Acantholipan gonzalezi Rivera-Sylva et al. 2018 | |
Discovery and naming
In the north of Mexico, fragmentary fossils have been found of nodosaurids. A partial skeleton excavated at Los Primos near San Miguel in Coahuila, was described in 2011. When Rivera-Sylva and colleagues reported the discovery of this specimen, CPC 272, they initially considered it too fragmentary to name.[2] Later it was judged that the remains were sufficiently distinct to be given a binomial name.
In 2018, the type species Acantholipan gonzalezi was named by Rivera-Sylva et al. The generic name combines a Greek akanthos, "spine", with lipán, the usual Spanish designation of the Lépai-Ndé, the "Gray People", a tribe of the Apache inhabiting the area of the find. The specific name honours the Mexican paleontologist Arturo Homero González-González, the chairman of the Museo del Desierto at Saltillo. Acantholipan is the first ankylosaurian species named from Mexico.[1]
The holotype specimen, CPC 272, was found alongside another nodosaur, CPC 273, in a marine layer of the Pen Formation and dates from the Santonian. It consists of partial skeleton lacking the skull. Its remains include a back vertebra, a tail vertebra, a piece of a rib, the underside of the left humerus, an upper left ulna, the underside of the left femur and a spike-like osteoderm probably from the posterior thorax.[2] The fossil is part of the Colección Paleontológica de Coahuila, Museo del Desierto, Saltillo.[1]
Classification
Acantholipan belongs to the Nodosaurinae and is the sister taxon to Nodosaurus.[1] The 2018 phylogenetic analysis of Rivera-Sylva and colleagues is below:[1]
| Nodosauridae |
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