Ornithopoda

Ornithopoda

[‚ȯr·nə′thäp·ə·də]

(paleontology)

A suborder of extinct reptiles in the order Ornithischia including all bipedal forms in the order.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Ornithopoda

 

a suborder of ornithischian dinosaurs, representatives of which moved on their two hind legs (bipedalism). In an upright position, the animals attained a height of 10 m. Ornithopods lived from the Late Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous. They were predominantly semiaquatic or aquatic and fed on terrestrial or aquatic vegetation, possibly also on small aquatic animals. The teeth were cemented together along the entire length of the jaw. Vertically, each row of teeth consisted of several crowns, which were replaced by new ones as they wore out. The massive hind limbs were 1½ to two times the length of the forelimbs. The most widely studied ornithopods are the families Iguanodontidae and Hadrosauridae, which were widely distributed on all continents except Australia.

REFERENCE

Osnovy paleontologii: Zemnovodnye, presmykaiushchiesia i ptitsy. Moscow, 1964.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.