#iani

(Reconstructed skull of Iani smithi, from Zanno et al., 2023)

Meaning of name: Iani = for Ianus [Roman deity of transitions]; smithi = for Joshua Aaron Smith [contributor to paleontological discoveries and conservation in Utah]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian)

Where found: Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah, U.S.A.

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual, including parts of the limbs, much of the vertebral column, and a nearly complete skull. Some isolated teeth from the same rock unit probably also belong to this species.

Notes: Iani was an iguanodontian, a diverse group of plant-eating dinosaurs that includes the duck-billed hadrosaurids. It was only a distant relative to hadrosaurids though, and may have instead been more closely related to the rhabdodontids, a lineage of small- to medium-sized iguanodontians from Europe. If so, Iani would be the one of the few rhabdodontid-like iguanodontians known from North America, possibly along with the Early Cretaceous Tenontosaurus.

Iguanodontians from the Late Cretaceous of North America are mostly represented by hadrosaurids and their close relatives, and by the end of the Cretaceous they appear to have been the only iguanodontians left in the region. However, Iani demonstrates that other types of iguanodontians had not yet disappeared from North America at the beginning of the Late Cretaceous.

doodles of Liarel, Iani, and Saedir!!!