Pelorosaurus
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Extinct (fossil)
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Pelorosaurus (pel-LOH-ro-SAWR-us, meaning "monstrous lizard") was a huge plant-eating dinosaur. Pelorosaurus was one of the first sauropod dinosaurs ever discovered. Gideon Mantell originally named it Colossosaurus, but, upon discovering that colossus was merely Greek for "statue", changed the name. Melville (1849) had already described some fossil material as Cetiosaurus.
Pelorosaurus lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 138-112 million years ago. Fossils have been found in England and Portugal. It was about eighty feet long. It is known from a humerus, vertebrae, a sacrum, pelvis and limb fragments, as well as from skin impressions; it was covered in hexagonal scales. A number of species have been assigned to the genus, most of which are dubious. Pelorosaurus has come to be a wastebasket taxon for any European sauropod. However, in recent years much work has been done to rectify the confusion. The genus belongs to the family Brachiosauridae.
Pelorosaurus was the first sauropod to be identified as a dinosaur, although it was not the first to be discovered. Richard Owen had discovered Cetiosaurus in 1841 but had incorrectly identified it as a gigantic sea-going crocodilian. In identifying Pelorosaurus as a dinosaur Mantell was able to do the same for Cetiosaurus.
[edit] Species
- P. conybearei (Melville 1849) (type) = P. armatus (Gervais, 1852/Lydekker, 1889), P. brevis (Owen 1842/von Huene 1927), Pleurocoelus valdensis, Ornithopsis conybearei, Cetiosaurus brevis, C. conybearei, Morosaurus brevis, Oplosaurus armatus and Astrodon valdensis. Some hold that the type is a nomen dubium.
- P. becklesii (Mantell 1852) = Morosaurus becklesii
- P. hulkei (Seeley 1870)= Ornithopsis hulkei.
- P. humerocristatus (Hulke 1874/Sauvage 1887) - nomen dubium = Cetiosaurus humerocristatus and Ornithopsis humerocristatus.
- P. leedsii (Hulke 1887) - nomen dubium = Ornithopsis leedsii, Cetiosauriscus leedsii and Cetiosaurus leedsii.
- P. mackesoni (Owen 1884/Steel 1970) - nomen dubium or junior synonym of Dinodocus mackesoni.
- P. manseli (Hulke 1874) - nomen dubium = (possibly) Ischyrosaurus manseli, Ornithopsis manseli and Morinosaurus typus.
- P. megalonyx (Seeley 1869)- nomen dubium = Gigantosaurus megalonyx.
- P. praecursor (Sauvage 1876/1895) = Neosodon praecursor.
[edit] References
- Cadbury, D. (2001). The Dinosaur Hunters, Fourth Estate, Great Britain.
- Mantell, G. A. (1850). "On the Pelorosaurus; an undescribed gigantic terrestrial reptile, whose remains are associated with those of the Iguanodon and other saurians in the strata of the Tilgate Forest, in Sussex." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 140: 379-390.
