Dacentrurus
Name:
Dacentrurus
(Very sharp tail).
Phonetic: Da-sen-tru-rus.
Named By: Frederic Augustus Lucas - 1902.
Synonyms: Omosaurus armatus.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Ornithischia, Stegosauria, Stegosauridae.
Species: D. armatus (type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: About 7-8 meters long.
Known locations: England, France, Portugal and
Spain.
Time period: Kimmeridgian of the Jurassic.
Fossil representation: Several individuals.
Dacentrurus
was originally named Omosaurus armatus in 1875
by the famous
British palaeontologist Richard Owen, however the genus name of
Omosaurus was already used to name another animal.
This led to the
1902 renaming by Frederic Lucas, although the species name was
still retained in creating the type species of the new genus, as is
standard procedure for such a renaming.
Unlike more famous genera that have plates all the way down
the back to a spiked ‘thagomizer’ on the end of the tail,
Dacentrurus had eight pairs of triangular plates
that ran from the
neck to the posterior end of the sacrum (hip), which were then
followed by four pairs of large spikes that ran down to the thagomizer
(four more pairs of spikes that pointed to the sides). This
arrangement is very similar to the African stegosaur
Kentrosaurus,
though analysis suggests that the closest relative of Dacentrurus
was
Miragaia.
Another study has also revealed that Dacentrurus
is one of
if not the closest relative of the North American Hesperosaurus.
Dacentrurus
lived in the
Kimmeridgian area of the late Jurassic period, the heyday for the
stegosaurs where they seem to have been at their most successful.
Aside from being discovered in England, further remains have been in
France and Spain with a particularly large number coming from
Portugal. Study of late Jurassic ecosystems in North America has
brought the strong suggestion that stegosaurs regularly came into
conflict with theropod dinosaurs like Allosaurus.
This predator/prey
interaction may have also happened in late Jurassic Europe, although
most of the large theropods such as Dubreuillosaurus
and Poekilopleuron
are so far only known from earlier in the Jurassic.
Further reading
- Monographs on the fossil Reptilia of the Mesozoic formations. Part
II. (Genera Bothriospondylus, Cetiosaurus,
Omosaurus). - The
Palaeontographical Society, London 1875: 15-93 - Richard Owen - 1875.
- Paleontological notes. The generic name Omosaurus.
A new generic name
for Stegosaurus marshi. - Science, new series 16(402):435 - F. A. Lucas
- 1902.
- Über den altesten Rest von Omosaurus (Dacenturus)
im englischen
Dogger, - Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie,
1910(1): 75-78 - F. von Huene - 1910.
- A juvenile stegosaurian dinosaur ‘‘Astrodon pusillus’’
from the Upper
Jurassic of Portugal, with comments on Upper Jurassic and Lower
Cretaceous biogeograph, - Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1:
245–256 - P. M. Galton - 1981.
- British plated dinosaurs (Ornithischia, Stegosauridae). - Journal of
Vertebrate Paleontology, 5: 211-254 - P. M. Galton - 1985.
- New vertebral remains of the stegosaurian dinosaur Dacentrurus
from
Riodeva (Teruel, Spain). Geogaceta, 53, 17-20. - Alberto Cobos and
Francisco Gascó - 2013.
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