Campylodoniscus

small curved tooth

• kampylos · Greek · curved, bent
• odous (odontos) · Greek · tooth
• -iskus · Latin/Greek diminutive · small, little

The name combines the Greek words 'kampylos' (curved) and 'odous/odontos' (tooth), with the diminutive suffix '-iskus', giving the overall meaning of 'small curved tooth'. It was chosen to reflect the distinctively curved shape of the tooth fragments on which the genus was based. The name is closely related to the earlier genus Campylodon, from which it is distinguished by the diminutive suffix.

Named by

Huene

Year named

1929

Period

Late Cretaceous

Found in

Patagonia, Argentina

Campylodoniscus is a nomen dubium. It was erected by Friedrich von Huene in 1929 to replace the earlier name Campylodon Huene, 1927, which had already been used for a fish (making it preoccupied). The genus is based on very fragmentary material — isolated, curved tooth crowns — from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina. It is thought to belong to a sauropod dinosaur, possibly a titanosaur, but the material is too incomplete to allow confident classification or to distinguish it reliably from other taxa.