Neostegosauria Sánchez-Fenollosa & Cobos (nomen cladi novum)

Sánchez-Fenollosa, Sergio & Cobos, Alberto, 2025, New insights into the phylogeny and skull evolution of stegosaurian dinosaurs: An extraordinary cranium from the European Late Jurassic (Dinosauria: Stegosauria), Vertebrate Zoology 75, pp. 147-171 : 147-171

Neostegosauria Sánchez-Fenollosa & Cobos (nomen cladi novum)

Registration number.

1097.

Phylogenetic definition.

The smallest clade containing Kentrosaurus aethiopicus Hennig, 1915 a , Dacentrurus armatus Owen, 1875 , and Stegosaurus stenops Marsh, 1887 . This is a minimum-clade definition.

Etymology.

Derived from ‘ neo- ’ (Greek), meaning new. And from the clade name Stegosauria.

Reference phylogeny.

Figure 5 of this paper is designated as the primary reference phylogeny. Additional refence phylogenies include figure 3.14 of Carpenter et al. (2001), figure 8 of Maidment et al. (2006), figure 1 of Raven and Maidment (2017), figure 12 of Maidment et al. (2020), figure 8 of Dai et al. (2022), figure 6 of Jia et al. (2024), figure 15 of Li et al. (2024 a), figure 8 of Li et al. (2024 b), figure 7 of Li et al. (2024 c), and figure 12 of Zafaty et al. (2024).

Composition.

According to the primary reference phylogeny, the clade Neostegosauria comprises Lo. priscus , He. mjosi , S. stenops , J. junggarensis , W. homheni , Ya. ultimus , Al. longispinus , K. aethiopicus, Th. atlasicus , Ad. boulahfa , and D. armatus .

Comments.

Neostegosauria is the name established for the clade that includes the late-diverging members of Stegosauridae (Stegosaurinae and Dacentrurinae). This clade has been recovered in the last phylogenetic analyses although with differences in composition and topology. According to the primary reference phylogeny, it is supported by six synapomorphies (File S 1 [1.6]). These synapomorphies, except the two cranial ones, are widely recognized in these taxa. Neostegosaurs are late-diverging stegosaurids of medium to large size that at least inhabited Africa and Europe during the Middle and Late Jurassic, North America during the Late Jurassic, and Asia during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous. They are mainly characterized by presenting a dorsal process on the transverses processes of anterior and mid caudal vertebrae, and a solid sacral yoke with no foramina between ribs. Figure 5 of this paper has been designated as the primary reference phylogeny because it considers the latest taxonomic revisions, includes the highest number of stegosaurian OTUs, and provides a high-resolution topology.

Figures

Figure 5. Chronogram showing temporal, palaeogeographical, and phylogenetic relationships of stegosaurian dinosaurs. Single MPT with a length of 194 steps. CI = 0.660 and RI = 0.799. The extremely fragmentary Mongolostegus exspectabilis Tumanova & Alifanov, 2018 was excluded a priori. Bremer Support values above (not showed values under 2) and Standard Bootstrap values below (not showed values under 50). The MPT was scaled in time a posteriori using the function ‘ bin _ timePaleoPhy’ of the package ‘ paleotree’ (Bapst 2012) in the R library (R Core Team 2023). Silhouettes obtained from PhyloPic.