Penelopognathus
Penelopognathus
Extinct genus of dinosaurs
Penelopognathus (meaning "wild duck jaw") is a genus of dinosaur which lived during the Early Cretaceous. It was an iguanodont ancestral to hadrosaurids, which also contributes to the hypothesis that hadrosauroids originated in Asia.[1] Fossils have been found in the Bayin-Gobi Formation in what is now China. The type species, Penelopognathus weishampeli, named after David Weishampel, was described by Godefroit, Li, and Shang in 2005, based on fragmentary jaw fossils.[1]
Its jaw is similar to that of Altirhinus and Probactrosaurus, suggesting that Penelopognathus was related to the two genera.[1] Prieto-Márquez and Carrera Farias (2021) found that Telmatosaurus was the sister taxon to Penelopognathus, which was also found to be closely related to Lophorhothon, as opposed to Tethyshadros.[2] Penelopognathus grew up to around 5 metres (16 ft) long and around 2 metres (6.6 ft) tall when fully grown.