''Loricatosaurus'' (meaning "armored lizard") is a Stegosaurid genus from

Callovian In the geologic timescale, the Callovian is an age and stage in the Middle Jurassic, lasting between 166.1 ± 4.0 Ma (million years ago) and 163.5 ± 4.0 Ma. It is the last stage of the Middle Jurassic, following the Bathonian and preceding the ...

-age (

Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 163.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations co ...

) rocks of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Discovery and naming

''Loricatosaurus'' is known from remains previously assigned to ''

Lexovisaurus ''Lexovisaurus'' is a genus of stegosaur from mid-to-Late Jurassic Europe, 165.7-164.7 mya. Fossils of limb bones and armor fragments have been found in middle to late Jurassic-aged strata of England. Discovery and taxonomy In the early ...

'' that were first discovered at the Fletton brick pit in the

Oxford Clay Formation The Oxford Clay (or Oxford Clay Formation) is a Jurassic marine sedimentary rock formation underlying much of southeast England, from as far west as Dorset and as far north as Yorkshire. The Oxford Clay Formation dates to the Jurassic, specifical ...

Fletton Fletton is an area of the city of Peterborough, in the Peterborough district, in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England, south of the River Nene. Notable for its large brickworks, the area has given its name to "Fletton bricks", Admin ...

Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...

, England, by Alfred Leeds during November 1901.J. W. Hulke. 1887. Note on some dinosaurian remains in the collection of A. Leeds, Esq. Part I. Ornithopsis leedsii. Part II. Omosaurus, sp. Geological Magazine, decade 3 4:375-376 Leeds collected a semi articulated skeleton consisting of two cervical, six dorsal, and 16 caudal vertebrae, a partial right forelimb, partial left hindlimb, partial pelves, and some fragmentary dermal armor. One piece of armor was described as a parascapular spine, but it is actually a fragmentary tail spine. In 1957, another specimen now referred to ''Loricatosaurus'' was briefly referred to ''Lexovisaurus'' until a more proper description was made in 1985 by

Peter Galton Peter Malcolm Galton (born 14 March 1942 in London) is a British vertebrate paleontologist who has to date written or co-written about 190 papers in scientific journals or chapters in paleontology textbooks, especially on ornithischian and prosaur ...

. The specimen was a partial postcranial skeleton, including many vertebrae and a dorsal spine, from the Lower Callovian of Le Fresne d'Argences (

Calvados Calvados (, , ) is a brandy from Normandy in France, made from apples or pears, or from apples with pears. History In France Apple orchards and brewers are mentioned as far back as the 8th century by Charlemagne. The first known record of Norm ...

Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

. The material was later named ''Stegosaurus priscus'' (“ancient roofed lizard”) by Baron Franz Nopcsa in 1911 and ''

'' by Hoffstetter, 1957 and Peter Galton, 1985. However, upon later review of the material in 2008, Susannah Maidment and colleagues determined that ''Lexovisaurus'' was based upon nondiagnostic remains, and coined a new genus for ''Lexovisaurus priscus'' and its referred specimen. The genus name ''Loricatosaurus'' derives from the Latin "loricatus" (meaning armoured) and the Greek "sauros" (meaning lizard). It is known from only two partial skeletons. Contrary to previous reports (as ''Lexovisaurus''), a shoulder spine is not present in the known material; the possible spine is more likely from the tail.

Description

The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

(BMNH R3167) is a partial skeleton, including two cervical, six dorsal, and 16 caudal vertebrae, a right humerus and right ulna, some carpus, two metacarpals (one incomplete), a partial ilia, partial right ischium, and pubis, the left femur, partial tibia and fibula, fused tarsals, and some armour plates. This material now resides in the British Museum of Natural History's palaeontology collection. Another referred specimen (MHBR 001), from an unnamed unit referred to as the Marnes a ''Belemnopsis latesulcatus'' Formation from the lower

of Le Fresne d’Argences,

, France, includes neck, back and tail vertebrae, a left upper arm, right thigh, shin and calf, and some armour plates. Multiple phylogenetic analyses carried out by S. Maidment and O. Mateus between 2008 and 2010 place ''Loricatosaurus'' as a basal genus within the family

Stegosauridae Stegosauridae is a family of thyreophoran dinosaurs (armoured dinosaurs) within the suborder Stegosauria. The clade is defined as all species of dinosaurs more closely related to ''Stegosaurus'' than ''Huayangosaurus''.David B. Weishampel, Peter ...

References

External links

Stegosaurs Callovian life Middle Jurassic dinosaurs of Europe Jurassic England Jurassic France Fossils of England Oxford Clay Fossils of France Fossil taxa described in 2008 Ornithischian genera {{stegosaur-stub

Discovery and naming

Description

See also

References

External links