Ischyrosaurus Temporal range: Upper Jurassic |
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Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Sauropsida |
Superorder: | Dinosauria |
Order: | Saurischia |
Suborder: | Sauropodomorpha |
Infraorder: | Sauropoda |
Family: | unknown |
Genus: | Ischyrosaurus Hulke, 1874 ?vide Lydekker, 1888 |
Species: | I. manseli Hulke, 1874 ?vide Lydekker, 1888 |
Binomial name | |
Ischyrosaurus manseli Hulke, 1874 ?vide Lydekker, 1888 |
"Ischyrosaurus" (meaning "strong lizard", for its large humerus; name in quotation marks because it is preoccupied) was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Kimmeridgian-age Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, Cambridgeshire, England. It is sometimes included with the Early Cretaceous-age wastebasket taxon Pelorosaurus, although there is little evidence for this.
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"Ischyrosaurus" is based on a partial humerus (BMNH R41626) found in 1868.[1] John Hulke described it briefly in 1869,[1] then named it in 1874.[2] The genus is preoccupied by a name Edward Drinker Cope coined in 1869.
Like most sauropod remains from the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous of Europe, it became part of the Pelorosaurus-Ornithopsis taxonomic tangle, being referred first to Ornithopsis as O. manseli,[3] then to Pelorosaurus as P. manseli.[4][5][6]
Upchurch et al., in the most recent review (2004), lists it as a dubious sauropod of unknown affinities.[7] A new name is technically required, but because of the fractured taxonomy of Jurassic-Cretaceous European sauropods, researchers are waiting for better material.
As a sauropod, it would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.[7]