Eoplophysis

Eoplophysis Temporal range: Middle Jurassic, 166Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Order:	†Ornithischia
Suborder:	†Stegosauria
Family:	†Stegosauridae
Genus:	†Eoplophysis Ulansky, 2014
Species:	† E. vetustus
Binomial name
Eoplophysis vetustus (von Huene, 1910)
Synonyms
Omosaurus vetustus von Huene, 1910

Eoplophysis is a genus of stegosaur known from the Middle Jurassic Cornbrash Formation, Sharp's Hill Formation, and Chipping Norton Formation of England.^[1]

Taxonomy

It was originally named Omosaurus vetustus by the renowned German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene.^[2] The holotype, OUM J.14000, is a two feet long right femur of a juvenile individual from the Middle Jurassic (upper Bathonian) Cornbrash Formation of Oxfordshire, England, although it was probably reworked from the slightly older Forest Marble Formation in view of its eroded nature. Because of the renaming of Omosaurus, an occupied name, as Dacentrurus, O. vetustus was renamed into a Dacentrurus vetustus in 1964.^[3]

In the 1980s, researcher Peter Malcolm Galton reviewed all known stegosaur material from the Bathonian of England and concluded that Omosaurus vetustus was valid and should be tentatively referred to Lexovisaurus.^[4][5] However, the species was later considered a nomen dubium in both reviews of Stegosauria.^[6][7] In their alpha-taxonomic review of stegosaurs, Susannah Maidment and her colleagues noted that OUM J.14000 shares characters present in both sauropods and stegosaurs, but that it lacks synapomorphies exclusive to Stegosauria and assigned it as a Dinosauria indet.^[8] Nevertheless, the amateur paleontologist Roman Ulansky coined the new genus Eoplophysis ("Dawn Armed Form") for O. vetustus, noting differences with the femora of other stegosaurs.^[9]

References