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Thyreophorans
Mymoorapelta.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Sauropsida Superorder: Dinosauria Order: Ornithischia Suborder: Thyreophora Nopcsa, 1915
Clades
Tatisaurus Scutellosaurus Emausaurus Eurypoda Ankylosauria Stegosauria

The Thyreophora ("shield bearers", often known simply as "armored dinosaurs" - Greek: θυρεος, a large oblong shield, like a door and φορεω, I carry) were a subgroup of the ornithischian dinosaurs. They were armored herbivorous dinosaurs, living from the early Jurassic until the end of the Cretaceous.

The Thyreophora include well-known suborders such as the Ankylosauria and Stegosauria as well as lesser known groups. Among the Ankylosauria, the two main groups are the Ankylosaurids and Nodosaurids. The clade has been defined as the group consisting of all species more closely related to Ankylosaurus than to Triceratops. The Thyreophora are the sistergroup of the Cerapoda within the Genasauria.

Ankylosaurids are noted by the presence of a large tail club composed of distended vertebrae that have fused into a single mass. They were heavy-set and heavily armored from head to tail in bony armor, even down to minor features such as the eyelids. Spikes and nodules, often of horn, were set into the armor. The head was flat, stocky, with little or no "neck", roughly shovel-shaped and characterized by two spikes on either side of the head approximately where the ears and cheeks were. Euoplocephalus tutus is perhaps the most well-known ankylosaurid.

Nodosaurids, the other family in the Ankylosauria, may actually include the ancestors of the ankylosaurids. They lived during the middle Jurassic (approx 170 mya) on up through the late Cretaceous (65 mya) and, while equally armored as the ankylosaurids, do not have a tail club. Instead, the bony bumps and spikes that covered the rest of their body continued out to the tail and/or were augmented with sharp spines. Two examples of nodosaurs are Sauropelta and Edmontonia, the latter most notable for its formidable forward-pointing shoulder spikes.

The Stegosauria are comprised of the Stegosauridae and Huayangosauridae and lived mostly from the Middle to Late Jurassic, although some fossils have been found in the Early Cretaceous.

• SUBORDER THYREOPHORA
  • ?Tatisaurus
  • Scutellosaurus
  • Eurypoda
    • ?Brachypodosaurus
    • ?Lusitanosaurus
    • Infraorder Stegosauria
      • Emausaurus
      • Family Huayangosauridae
      • Family Stegosauridae
    • Infraorder Ankylosauria
      • Family Scelidosauridae
        • Bienosaurus
        • Scelidosaurus
      • Minmi
      • Antarctopelta
      • Family Nodosauridae
      • Family Ankylosauridae

"Tyreophorus" is an informal generic name, attributed to Friedrich von Huene, 1929, that is sometimes seen in lists of dinosaurs. It is probably a typographical error; von Huene intended to assign indeterminate remains to Thyreophora incertae sedis, but at some point in the process of publication, the text was revised to make it appear that he was creating a new generic name "Tyreophorus" (as described by George Olshevsky in a 1999 post to the Dinosaur Mailing List). The name is undescribed and has not been used seriously.

• Von Huene, F. Revista De Museo De La Plata (1929). (on "Tyreophorus")
• George Olshevsky. Re: What are these dinosaurs. Retrieved on 2007-01-29. (on "Tyreophorus")

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