Japan’s first named ankylosaur was linked to nodosaurids millions of years ago

(Image credit: Masato Hattori) More than three decades after a partial ankylosaur skull was first discovered in a Hokkaido riverbank deposit, researchers have formally named it as a new genus and species, Nipponopelta yezoensis, the first ankylosaur ever formally named from Japan. The study, ‘A new nodosaurid ankylosaur (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Upper Cretaceous Hikagenosawa Formation in Japan reveals dispersal pattern of Asian nodosaurid ankylosaurs,’ published in Cretaceous Research, was led by Shumpei Oyabu of Hokkaido University alongside colleagues from Japan, Canada and the United States.Using CT scanning and phylogenetic analysis, the researchers resolved the specimen's identity and uncovered an unexpected evolutionary relationship with nodosaurids from North America and Europe. Here's how the fossil was rediscovered, and what it reveals about how armoured dinosaurs were distributed across ancient continents.A Hokkaido fossil in storage, how the specimen was finally identifiedA partial skull, the atlas, or first cervical vertebra, and several teeth, catalogued as MCM A522, were discovered in a concretion from the Hikagenosawa Formation along the Omakizawa River, a ...