Barilium
Encyclopedia
Barilium is a genus
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of iguanodontian dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 which was first described as a species of Iguanodon
Iguanodon
Iguanodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived roughly halfway between the first of the swift bipedal hypsilophodontids and the ornithopods' culmination in the duck-billed dinosaurs...

(I. dawsoni) by Richard Lydekker
Richard Lydekker
Richard Lydekker was an English naturalist, geologist and writer of numerous books on natural history.-Biography:...

 in 1888, the specific epithet honouring the discoverer Charles Dawson
Charles Dawson
Charles Dawson was an amateur British archaeologist who is credited and blamed with discoveries that turned out to be imaginative frauds, including that of the Piltdown Man , which he presented in 1912...

.

In 2010 it was reclassified as a separate genus by David Norman
David B. Norman
David Bruce Norman is a British paleontologist, currently Director of the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge University. He is a fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge where he teaches geology in the Natural Sciences tripos. He is a member of the Palaeontological Association. He has studied Iguanodon...

. The generic name Barilium is derived from Greek barys, "heavy", and Latin ilium
Ilium
-Places:* Ilion or, Latinized, Ilium, another name for the legendary city of Troy, hence the title of Homer's Iliad*Ilium , an ancient city in Epirus...

. Later in 2010, Kenneth Carpenter
Kenneth Carpenter
Kenneth Carpenter is a paleontologist. He is the museum director of the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum and author or co-author of a number of books on dinosaurs and Mesozoic life...

 and Yusuke Ishida independently assigned it to the new genus Torilion, which is thus a junior objective synonym of Barilium. It is known from two partial skeletons found near St Leonards-on-Sea
St Leonards-on-Sea
St Leonards-on-Sea is part of Hastings, East Sussex, England, lying immediately to the west of the centre. The original part of the settlement was laid out in the early 19th century as a new town: a place of elegant houses designed for the well-off; it also included a central public garden, a...

 in East Sussex
East Sussex
East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, from the middle Valanginian
Valanginian
In the geologic timescale, the Valanginian is an age or stage of the Early or Lower Cretaceous. It spans between 140.2 ± 3.0 Ma and 136.4 ± 2.0 Ma...

-age Lower Cretaceous
Early Cretaceous
The Early Cretaceous or the Lower Cretaceous , is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous...

 Wadhurst Clay.Lydekker based the species on the syntype
Syntype
In biological nomenclature, a syntype is a term used to indicate a specimen with a special status.In zoological nomenclature, a syntype is defined as "Each specimen of a type series from which neither a holotype nor a lectotype has been designated [Arts. 72.1.2, 73.2, 74]. The syntypes...

 series BMNH R798, 798a, 803-805, 806, 798b, 802, 802a and 799-801. Norman chose NHMUK R 798 and R802, a dorsal vertebra and a left ilium, as the lectotype
Lectotype
In botanical nomenclature and zoological nomenclature, a lectotype is a kind of name-bearing type. When a species was originally described on the basis of a name-bearing type consisting of multiple specimens, one of those may be designated as the lectotype...

.

A contemporary of Hypselospinus
Hypselospinus
Hypselospinus is a genus of iguanodontian dinosaur which was first described as a species of Iguanodon by Richard Lydekker in 1889, the specific name honouring William Henry Fitton....

(also once thought to be a species of Iguanodon), Barilium was a robust iguanodontian estimated at 8 metres long (26.2 ft).

Barilium is separated from Hypselospinus on the basis of vertebral and pelvic characters, size, and build. For example, Barilium was more robust than Hypselospinus, with large Camptosaurus
Camptosaurus
Camptosaurus is a genus of plant-eating, beaked ornithischian dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic period of western North America. The name means 'flexible lizard', ....

-like vertebrae featuring short neural spines, whereas Hypselospinus is known for its "long, narrow, and steeply inclined neural spines".
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