A study was published on Parankylosaurs yesterday. And it makes their phylogeny really weird.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2025.2583504
For starters, the study recovers Minmi as a member of Parankylosauria, so we’ve been depicting it wrong this whole time and it should have a tail axe. It also describes new material belonging to Patagopelta
Now here’s the weird part; the phylogenetic analysis recovers Parankylosauria outside of Ankylosauria, going against the long standing consensus that they’re the basal most ankylosaurs. According to the study, Parankylosauria is a separate lineage within Thyreophora that spilt off before Stegosauria and Ankylosauria. On one of their phylogenetic analyses, they recover Yuxisaurus as a Parankylosaur.
I personally am going to continue to treat them as ankylosaurs, because that’s been the long standing consensus on their phylogenetics. But let’s see what the future holds.
