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Cardiodon (meaning "heart tooth", in reference to the shape) was a herbivorous genus of sauropod dinosaur, based on a tooth from the Middle Jurassic (late Bathonian) Forest Marble Formation of Wiltshire, England. Historically, it is very obscure and usually referred to Cetiosaurus, but recent analyses suggest that it is a distinct genus, and possibly related to Turiasaurus. Cardiodon was the first sauropod genus named.Taylor, Michael P., (2010), "Sauropod dinosaur research: a historical review", pp. 361–386 in: Richard T. J. Moody, Eric Buffetaut, Darren Naish and David M. Martill (eds.), Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: a Historical Perspective. Geological Society of London, Special Publication 343
Within a few decades, he and others were viewing Cardiodon as a possible synonym of his most well-known sauropod genus, Cetiosaurus.Phillips, J. (1871). Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames. Clarendon Press:Oxford, 529 p.Owen, R. (1875). Monographs of the fossil Reptilia of the Mesozoic formations (part III) (genera Bothriospondylus, Cetiosaurus, Omosaurus). Palaeontographical Society Monographs 29:15-93. Richard Lydekker formalized this view in a roundabout way in 1890, by assigning Cetiosaurus oxoniensis to Cardiodon on the basis of teeth from Oxfordshire associated with a skeleton of C. oxoniensis.Lydekker, R. (1890). Suborder Sauropoda. In: Lydekker, R. (ed.). Catalogue of the Fossil Reptile and Amphibia of the British Museum (Natural History). Part 1. Taylor and Francis:London, p. 131–152. He also added a second tooth (BMNH R1527) from the Great Oolite near Cirencester, Gloucestershire. More typically, Cardiodon has been assigned to Cetiosaurus, sometimes as a separate species Cetiosaurus rugulosus,Steel, R. (1970). Part 14. Saurischia. Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie/Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology. Part 14. Gustav Fischer Verlag:Stuttgart, p. 1–87. in spite of its priority.
In 2003, Paul Upchurch and John Martin, reviewing Cetiosaurus, found that there is little evidence to assign the C. oxoniensis teeth to the skeleton, and the " C. oxoniensis" teeth differ from the Cardiodon teeth ( Cardiodon teeth are convex facing the tongue); therefore, they supported Cardiodon being retained as its own genus.Upchurch, P.M., and Martin, J. (2003). The anatomy and taxonomy of Cetiosaurus (Saurischia, Sauropoda) from the Middle Jurassic of England. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 23(1):208-231. Upchurch et al. (2004) repeated this assessment, and found that though the teeth have no known autapomorphies, they are those of a eusauropod.Upchurch, P.M., Barrett, P.M., and Dodson, P. (2004). Sauropoda. In: Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.). The Dinosauria (2nd edition). University of California Press:Berkeley, p. 259–322. More recently, Royo-Torres et al. (2006), in their description of Turiasaurus, pointed out Cardiodon as a possible relative to their new, giant sauropod, placing it in the Turiasauria.Royo-Torres, R., Cobos, A., and Alcalá, L. (2006). A giant European dinosaur and a new sauropod clade. Science 314:1925-1927. Earlier, Cardiodon had been usually assigned to the Cetiosauridae or a Cardiodontidae of its own.
Description
The original tooth shows, as far as can be deduced from the surviving illustrations, the rare combination of being spatulate and having a convex inner side, though the convexity is slight. Its crown is short and wide, slightly curving to the inside. The outer side is strongly convexly curved from the front to the rear. On this side a shallow groove is present, running parallel to the rear edge. The crown tapers towards its tip. The edges have no denticles. The enamel shows the little wrinkles to which the specific name refers.
Paleobiology
As a sauropod, Cardiodon would have been a large, herbivore, but because of the scanty remains, much more cannot be said.
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