The Interesting Story of Scelidosaurus: A British Yankee in St. George’s Court
#Scelidosaurus was named by Sir Richard Owen in 1859, seemingly from the most complete dinosaur material known in the world at the time. However, it wasn’t described until 2020.
Found in the fine-grained mudstone of the Charmouth Mudstone Formation, which has produced incredibly well-preserved fossils of marine reptiles, I wonder if this be a bloat and float, where it died on the shore, was washed out to sea (likely a storm), where the gasses caused it to float about for a few days until it popped and sank. It would float on its back, preventing sharks and other predators from ripping it apart.
Pugnacious Owen named it in an encyclopedia entry and, hilarious to me, he supposedly meant the name to mean “Limb Reptile,” as all he described were limbs. However, according to translators with skills far beyond mine, the name means “rib of beef lizard,” which if true is one of the funniest inadvertent etymologies I’ve seen. Could he have been referencing the Shales With Beef Member (yep, that’s a thing), as Owen seemed too sharp to make such an error. Yet digging deep I found references that indicate he was not being extra clever; it looks like he mistranslated.
This Early #Jurassic #ankylosaur relative neared 14’ long and was around 700 lbs. This amazing cast is on display at the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm. The original skeleton is at the Bristol City Museum in England.
Other than being cool, why is a British beast proudly displayed in Utah? #Scutellosaurus, that’s why. I finally saw the holotype of #Scutellosaurus, at the Museum of Northern Arizona, and it is adorable! It is also closely allied to Scelidosaurus. We find many Early Jurassic scutes in Arizona and the surrounding EJ areas. Thus, this skeleton is used to represent what the Southwestern critter looked like. Some have called the AZ scutes Scelidosaurus, but even in the Jurassic, Arizona and the British Isles were a wee bit apart. Scutello looked similar to Scelido, but from what I saw was more bipedal, and much smaller. Think Golden Retriever versus small cow in size. I hope to obtain permission to cast Scutello someday
#FossilCrates