page_title: Scelidosaurus
section_title: Species
hierarchical_section_title: Scelidosaurus / History of discovery / Species
caption_attribution_description: English: Scelidosaurus remains in Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery.
context_page_description: Scelidosaurus is a genus of herbivorous armoured ornithischian dinosaur from the Jurassic of England.
  Scelidosaurus lived during the Early Jurassic Period, during the Sinemurian to Pliensbachian stages around 191 million years ago. This genus and related genera at the time lived on the supercontinent Laurasia. Its fossils have been found near Charmouth in Dorset, England, and are known for their excellent preservation. Scelidosaurus has been called the earliest complete dinosaur. It is the most completely known dinosaur of the British Isles. Scelidosaurus is currently the only classified dinosaur found in Ireland. Despite this, a modern description only materialised in 2019. After initial finds in the 1850s, comparative anatomist Richard Owen named and described Scelidosaurus in 1859. Only one species, Scelidosaurus harrisonii named by Owen in 1861, is considered valid today, although one other species was proposed in 1996.
  Scelidosaurus was about 4 metres long. It was a largely quadrupedal animal, feeding on low scrubby plants, the parts of which were bitten off by the small, elongated head to be processed in the large gut.
context_section_description: Scelidosaurus harrisonii, named and described by Owen, is currently the only recognized species, based on several nearly complete skeletons. A potential second species from the Sinemurian-age Lower Lufeng Formation, Scelidosaurus oehleri, was described by David Jay Simmons in 1965 under its own genus, Tatisaurus. In 1996 Spencer G. Lucas moved it to Scelidosaurus. Although the fossils are fragmentary, this reassessment has not been accepted, and S. oehleri is today once again recognized as Tatisaurus.
  In 1989, scutes which were found in the Kayenta Formation (Glen Canyon Group) of northern Arizona, were by Kevin Padian referred to a Scelidosaurus sp., and used to determine that the age of the strata was around 199.6-196.5 million years ago, at a time when it was still thought that Scelidosaurus harrisonii dated to the early Sinemurian. These scutes established a geographic tie-in between Arizona's Glen Canyon and Europe, where fossils of Scelidosaurus had previously been discovered. Later scientists have rejected the assignment to Scelidosaurus, as the scutes are different in form. In 2014, Roman Ulansky named a new species, S. arizonenesis, based on these specimens. In 2016, Peter Malcolm Galton and Kenneth Carpenter identified it as a nomen dubium, instead once again placing the specimens as Thyreophora indet.
  In 2000, David Martill et al. announced the preservation of soft tissue in a specimen referred to a cf. Scelidosaurus sp., that is, an unnamed species for which a comparison with Scelidosaurus can be illuminating. The fossil, with inventory number BRSMG CF2781, was in the early 1990s, in an already prepared state, discovered in the legacy of the late Professor John Challinor, which had used it to illustrate his lectures with. Its provenance is unknown. It consists of a series of eight caudal vertebrae in a cut slab of carbonate mudstone, which was judged to date from the late Hettangian to Sinemurian stages. Parts of the fossil were preserved in such a way that an envelope of preserved soft tissue is visible around the vertebrae, and show the presence of an epidermal layer over the scutes. The authors concluded that the osteoderms of all basal armoured dinosaurs were covered in a tough, probably keratinous layer of skin.
caption: Skeleton of a young specimen, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
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