Outline: a typical ankylosaur
Patagopelta
"Patagonian shield"
Type species Patagopelta cristata
- Lived
- 72 to 66 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Group
- Ankylosaurs, Nodosauridae
- Found in
- Argentina
- Named by
- Riguetti et al. 2022
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
70 million years ago
Field notes
About Patagopelta
What it was like
Patagopelta was a small armored plant eater, known from partial bones and bony armor plates. It was first described as a nodosaur, but later finds suggest it belongs with the small southern ankylosaurs such as Stegouros.
It was small for an ankylosaur, perhaps because it lived in a world full of big titanosaurs and hadrosaurs.
Its world
It lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Argentina. Its bones come from the Allen Formation, where it shared the land with the raptor Austroraptor, the hunter Abelisaurus and the long-necked Aeolosaurus and Neuquensaurus.
How it was found
Riguetti and colleagues named Patagopelta in 2022.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Nodosauridae
Sources: WikidataNamed in: F. Riguetti, X. Pereda-Suberbiola, and D. Ponce, L. Salgado, S. Apesteguía, S. Rozadilla, V. Arbour. 2022. A new small-bodied ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of North Patagonia (Río Negro Province, Argentina). Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 20(1):2137441