Scelidosaurus

Skeleton of Scelidosaurus harrisonii

• England ( Europe)

• Scelidosaurus harrisonii

Scelidosaurus was a genus of dinosaur bird Beck from the group of Thyreophora. There were armored, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Lower Jurassic.

Features

Scelidosaurus reached a length of about four meters. The hind legs were much longer than the front legs; the feet of the front limbs, however, were the same size as that of the rear limbs. Each foot ended in four toes, with the innermost was the smallest. Presumably, this dinosaur was moving mostly away on all fours, but could - as in food intake - upright on its hind legs.

The armor of this animal consisted of horny scales, which ranged in longitudinal rows along the back and flanks. At the tail and on the limbs there were smaller scales, in addition to two conspicuous, triangular bony scales were directly behind the head. The skull was relatively elongated, the teeth were small and leaf -shaped and adapted to a herbivorous diet.

Discovery and designation

Fossil remains of Scelidosaurus were found mid-19th century in Dorset, England, and first described by Richard Owen. The name means " limbs lizard" and possibly alludes to the stocky legs, the type species is S. harrisonii. The finds are in the Lower Jurassic ( Sinemurian ) dated to around 200-190 million years.

In Arizona (USA) bones were discovered in the 1980s that could also come from Scelidosaurus, an unambiguous assignment is not possible because of the sparse finds.

System

Since its discovery, the systematic position of Scelidosaurus was controversial. It is undisputed that he counts within the bird Beck dinosaurs to the group of Thyreophora, which includes, among other things, Stegosauria and Ankylosauria, and that he is a relatively earlier and original members of this group. At times, he was regarded as stego or Ankylar, current phylogenetic analyzes see him as the sister group of the Eurypoda ( the common taxon of stego and ankylosauruses ). A possible cladogram is:

Scelidosaurus

Stegosauria

Ankylosauria

Primitive representatives ( Scutellosaurus, Emausaurus )

Together with Bienosaurus, a well-known only by a lower jaw dinosaurs Scelidosaurus forms in some classifications the family of Scelidosauridae. Because of sparse finds of Bienosaurus however, this is controversial.