



Rhabdodon priscus Name Rhabdodon priscus Order Ornithischia Suborder Ornithopoda Class Sauropsida Name Translation Fluted Tooth Period Late Cretaceous (80-65 million years ago) Location Europe Diet Plants Size 6 metres (20 feet) long, 2 metres (6 feet) tall

Rhabdodon', (meaning “fluted tooth”) is a genus of dinosaur that lived in Europe approximately 70 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous. It was an Rhabdodontid. Current evidence indicates it is an ornithopod similar to Tenontosaurus. Rhabdodon priscus is the type species; another species, described in 1991, is R. septimanicus (Buffetaut and Le Loeuff), but these may be the same animal. Rhabdodon lived in Spain, France, and on Haţeg Island in Romania. Remains of very similar dinosaur (femur and limb bone fragments) are also known from the Czech Republic. It was smaller than its relatives, possibly due to the insular environment that existed in Europe during the Cretaceous period.

Ornithopods were some of the most common dinosaurs unearthed in the 19th century, mainly because so many of them lived in Europe (where paleontology was pretty much invented). Discovered in 1869, Rhabdodon has yet to be properly classified, since (not to get too technical) it shares some of the characteristics of two types of ornithopods: Hadrosaurs and hypsilophodonts (herbivores similar to Hypsilophodon). In any event, Rhabdodon was a fairly small ornithopod for its time; other than that, its most notable features were its roundish teeth and unusually blunt head.

In the Media

Rhabdodon appears in the 1997 film The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island. It looks identical to Iguanodon however it is much smaller, meaning that it is likely an animation error.

Rhabdodon was in the Discovery Channel documentary Dinosaur Planet , referred to as Iguanodons where it was first seen grazing along with Some Ampelosaurus, then a carcass of one was seen being eaten by a Pyroraptor named Pod, which the carcass belonged to a pair of Tarascosaurus that killed it.

It was seen again on Dinosaur Train "Dinosaurs A to Z Part 3 & 4".