Zalmoxes

Zalmoxes is a genus of probable rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur from the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous in what is now Romania. The genus is known from specimens first named as the species Mochlodon robustum in 1899 by Franz Nopcsa before being reclassified as Rhabdodon robustum by him in 1915. In 1990, this name was corrected to Rhabdodon robustus by George Olshevsky and, in 2003, the species was once more reclassified as the type species Zalmoxes robustus. Zalmoxes represents one of the most common vertebrates of Transylvania during the latest Cretaceous period. The generic name refers to the Dacian deity Zalmoxis and the specific name robustus refers to the robustness of the remains. Another species, Zalmoxes shqiperorum, was named in 2003, but this species has since been reassigned to a separate genus of ceratopsian, Ferenceratops.

== History of discovery == left|thumb|Caudal vertebra, Deva Natural History Museum Zalmoxes was first known from numerous fossils found in Transylvania, which were named as the species Mochlodon robustus by Baron Franz Nopcsa in 1899. The specific name referred to its robust build. In 1915, Nopcsa renamed the species to Rhabdodon robustum, amended in 2003 by David B. Weishampel, Coralia-Maria Jianu, Zoltan Csiki, and David B. Norman. Weishampel et al. (2003) published a paper on new remains from Romania, which they found to represent a new species. They found R. robustus was sufficiently different from Rhabdodon and named the new genus Zalmoxes for the former. The genus refers to the Thracian deity Zalmoxis (sometimes spelled Zalmoxes), who retreated for three years in a crypt to be resurrected on the fourth year. Likewise, the animal Zalmoxes had been liberated from its fossil grave to attain taxonomic immortality. The naming article further explained this by referring to Zalmoxes, a ruler viewed as a deity by the Getae, a Thracian Tribe, according to Herodotus. Weishampel et al. also named new specimens as Zalmoxes shqiperorum, after Shqiperia, the Albanian name for Albania, with which Nopcsa had a special relationship. In 2026, this species was determined to be a ceratopsian dinosaur as opposed to an ornithopod, and given the new generic name Ferenceratops.