Paronychodon

Say it: PAIR-oh-NYE-koh-don

Name means: “beside claw tooth”1

Ate: MeatOther meat-eatersLate Jurassic to Late Cretaceous

Paronychodon was a small, meat-eating dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous. It is known only from its teeth, which are shaped like tiny, curved daggers with ridges. Scientists are not sure exactly what kind of dinosaur it was, but they think it might have been a fast, feathered hunter.1 3

Lived

155 to 66 million years ago3

Late Jurassic to Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

United States (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Utah), Canada (Alberta), Romania, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Japan, Russia, Uzbekistan3

Food

Meat3 1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Paronychodon is known only from its teeth, which are about 1 to 2 centimeters long. No other bones have been found, so scientists call it a 'tooth taxon'.1 2

The teeth of Paronychodon have a D-shaped cross-section, with one flat side and one convex side. They also have low ridges running up the crown.1

When Edward Drinker Cope first named Paronychodon in 1876, he thought the tooth came from a plesiosaur, a marine reptile. He changed his mind later that year and said it was a carnivorous dinosaur.1

Paronychodon teeth have been found in rocks that are between 75 and 66 million years old, from the Campanian to the Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous.1 3

Some scientists think Paronychodon might be a troodontid, a group of small, bird-like dinosaurs. Others think it could be a dromaeosaurid, like Velociraptor.1

A second species, Paronychodon caperatus, was originally thought to be a mammal tooth and named Tripriodon by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1889.1

Myth buster

Myth: Paronychodon is a well-known dinosaur with a full skeleton.

Truth: Paronychodon is only known from teeth. No skeleton has ever been found, so scientists are not sure what the rest of the animal looked like.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Paronychodon
Named by: Cope 18763
Group: Other meat-eaters
Family / clade: Paraves3
Classification: Theropoda3
Age of the rocks: 155 to 66 million years (Kimmeridgian to Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Hell Creek, Oldman, Dinosaur Park3
Countries: USA, Canada, Romania, Spain, Uzbekistan, Portugal3
Fossil records: 141 in the Paleobiology Database3
Also known as: Euronychodon, Tripriodon (older names now counted as the same animal)3
Discovery: Paronychodon was named by Edward Drinker Cope in 1876 based on a single tooth from the Judith River Formation in Montana, USA. The tooth is specimen AMNH 3018.1 3
Still debated: Scientists are not sure which group of theropod dinosaurs Paronychodon belongs to. It has been classified as a coelurid, ornithomimosaur, dromaeosaurid, archaeopterygid, and troodontid at different times.1

Where the facts come from

Paronychodon (en.wikipedia.org)
Paronychodon lacustris Cope, 1876 (gbif.org)
Paronychodon in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.