Zalmoxes is a genus of rhabdodontid ornithopod dinosaur from the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous in what is now Romania.

Zalmoxes was first known from numerous fossils found in Transylvania, which were named as the species Mochlodon robustus by Baron Franz Nopcsa in 1899.

Weishampel et al. (2003) published a paper on new remains from Romania, which they found to represent a new species.

Likewise, the animal Zalmoxes had been liberated from its fossil grave to attain taxonomic immortality.

The naming article further explained this by referring to a Greek legend according to which Zalmoxes was a slave of Pythagoras, when he travelled to Dacia and was deified by the Dacian people.

[3] Zalmoxes is a rather small genus of bipedal herbivore with a large triangular head and a beak.

However, when the species of Zalmoxes are taken into account separately, it can be seen than Z. shqiperorum continued the general size trend from Orodromeus to Tenontosaurus, while Z. robustus may have had slight nanism.

Ossified tendons are known from the juvenile specimen, showing that they were circular or elliptical in cross section and have fine striations in Z. shqiperorum.

[2] The species of Mochlodon, Rhabdodon and Zalmoxes had long had an uncertain phylogenetic placement, being referred to various families.

Nopcsa proposed that the animals of the Hateg Basin, which were smaller than their relatives elsewhere, adapted through insular dwarfism.

[8] A scientific paper from 2003 found that Zalmoxes most likely had a diet that consisted of tough fibrous plants like soft shoots, horsetails, angiosperms, pteridophytes, and ferns.