Iguanodon

Greg Paul is at it again; having just published a new taxonomy for Iguanodon. I thought this was pretty interesting; from his Predatory Dinosaurs of the World book, I had always pegged Paul as a notorious "lumper." He lumped Yangchuanosaurs into Metriocanthosaurus, for instance, and lumped Daspletosaurus and Tarbosaurus into Tyrannosaurus as well as lumping all albertosaurine tyrannosaurs into Albertosaurus. If I recall correctly, he also lumped most of the ornithomimids into Ornithomimus. There were plenty of other less notable examples, but the pattern of being a lumper was prominent.

That's why it surprised me a bit to see him break up the big assemblage of Iguanodon into several new genera, including Mantellisaurus, Dakotadon and Dollodon. He also removed a lot of rather dubious Iguanodon species names, which is a bit of lumping I'm actually OK with.

That actually makes a lot of sense. The idea that Iguanodon lasted for 75 million years unchanged stretched credulity, and the facility with which paleontologists lumped fossils into the genus regardless of displacement in time and place was another red flag that something was probably not quite right.

Mantellisaurus and Dollodon are therefore Wealdon Supergroup iguanodontids of more gracile build and also demonstrate some other morphological variability from Iguanodon itself. Dakotadon he calls a more basal critter than Iguanodon itself.

As an aside, I quite like the idea of naming these genera after early Iguanodon discovers and/or scholars Gideon Mantell and Louis Dollo.