A new reconstruction of Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel 1871

Department of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.2758v1
Subject Areas
Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Taxonomy, Zoology
Keywords
Nodosauridae, Late Cretaceous, Austria, dermal armor, age dimorphism, reconstruction
Copyright
© 2017 Frotzler
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Frotzler N. 2017. A new reconstruction of Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel 1871. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2758v1

Abstract

A novel reconstruction of the nodosaurid dinosaur Struthiosaurus austriacus Bunzel 1871 is presented. Because bones and dermal armor are preserved as disarticulated elements only and because of the lack of field notes from the original excavation(s), any attempt to reconstruct the animal is complicated. To date, no reconstruction is available for Struthiosaurus austriacus. This study primarily focuses on aspects of function and arrangement of dermal armor. The re-investigation of the original material of S. austriacus revealed that - in all likelihood - many plates from the left side of the body may well belong to a single individual. This observation is an important step towards the successful reconstruction of S. austriacus.

Author Comment

This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.