Hylaeosaurus

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Hylaeosaurus

Hylaeosaurus ( hye-LEE-oh-SAWR-us), from the Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
words hyle/??? "forest" and saurus/sa???? "lizard", is the most obscure of the three animals used by Sir Richard Owen

Richard Owen

Sir Richard Owen Order of the Bath was an English people biologist, comparative anatomy and paleontology.Owen is probably best remembered today for coining the word Dinosauria and for his outspoken opposition to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection....
to first define the new group Dinosaur

Dinosaur

Gideon Mantell

Gideon Algernon Mantell was an English people obstetrician, geologist and paleontology. He is credited with discovering the first fossils identified as originating from a dinosaur, which were teeth belonging to Iguanodon....
from the Tilgate

Tilgate, Crawley

Tilgate is a neighbourhood within the town of Crawley in West Sussex, England. The area contains a mixture of privately developed housing, self build groups and ex-council housing....
Forest in the south of England

England

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is one of three large museums on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London . Its main frontage is on Cromwell Road. The museum is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
of London

London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
, where it is still encased in the limestone

Limestone

File:Limestone Formation In Waitomo.jpgLimestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite . The deposition of limestone strata is often a by-product and indicator of biological activity in the geology record....
block in which it was found.

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Encyclopedia

Hylaeosaurus ( hye-LEE-oh-SAWR-us), from the Greek

Ancient Greek

Richard Owen

Dinosaur

Gideon Mantell

Tilgate, Crawley

England

Natural History Museum

London

Limestone

Genus

Armour (zoology)

Armour in animals is external or superficial protection against attack by predators, formed as part of the body , usually through the hardening of body tissues, outgrowths or secretions....
ankylosauria

Ankylosauria

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with Armour in the form of bony osteoderms....
n dinosaur

Dinosaur

Description and environment

Hylaeosaurus lived about 135 million years ago, in the Valanginian to Berriasian age

Faunal stage

In chronostratigraphy, a stage is a Geologic record laid down in an single age on the geologic timescale, which usually represents millions of years of deposition....
s of the early Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide, is a geologic period from circa to million years ago . In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows on the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period....
Period. Gideon Mantell originally estimated that the Hylaeosaurus was about 25 feet (7.5 meters) long, or about half the size of the other two original dinosaurs, the Iguanodon
Iguanodon

Iguanodon is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur that lived roughly halfway between the first of the swift bipedalism hypsilophodontids and the ornithopods' culmination in the hadrosaurid dinosaurs....
and the Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus

Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic Period of Europe . It is significant as the first genus of dinosaur to be described and named....
. Modern estimates range from 3 to 6 meters (10 to 20 feet) in length.

It is a fairly typical armored dinosaur, with three long spines on its shoulder, two at the hips, and three rows of armor running down its back. It may also have had a row of plates down its tail. It has a long head, more like the head of a Nodosaurus
Nodosaurus

Nodosaurus was a herbivore dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, the fossils of which are found in North America. Two incomplete specimens have been discovered in Wyoming and Kansas, and no skulls....
than an Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus

Ankylosaurus is a genus of ankylosaurid dinosaur, containing one species, A. magniventris. Fossils of Ankylosaurus are found in geologic formations dating to the very end of the Cretaceous Period in western North America....
, and a beak

Beak

The beak, bill or rostrum is an external anatomical structure of birds which, in addition to eating, is used for Personal grooming#In animals, manipulating objects, killing prey, probing for food, Courtship#Courtship in the animal kingdom and feeding their young....
, which it probably used to crop low-lying vegetation.

Classification

Hylaeosaurus armatus was first named by Gideon Mantell in 1833, and is currently considered the only species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring....
in the genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
. It is known from only two partial skeletons, some horny (dermal) spines, armor, and various other minor pieces. The best specimen (the original) is composed of the front end of a skeleton minus most of the head, though only the parts on the face of the stone block are easily studied.

Polacanthoides ponderosus, Hylaeosaurus conybearei, and Hylaeosaurus oweni have all been considered distinct dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of Landform ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous Period , when most of them became extinct in the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event....
s in the past, but are now considered to be alternate names for this species (junior synonyms), along with Hylaeosaurus. It has also been suggested that Polacanthus
Polacanthus

Polacanthus, deriving its name from the Ancient Greek poly-/p???- "many" and acantha/a?a??a "thorn" or "prickle", was an early armored, spiked, plant-eating ankylosaur from the early Cretaceous period....
is same species, but there are a number of differences in their bone structure (osteology

Osteology

Osteology is the science of bone. A subdiscipline of anthropology and archeology, osteology is a detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, morphology , function, disease, pathology, the process of ossification , the resistance and hardness of bones , etc....
).

Hylaeosaurus is traditionally considered to be a primitive nodosaurid, in the Polocanthinae subfamily, like Gastonia
Gastonia (dinosaur)

Gastonia is a genus of Polacanthinae ankylosauridaeid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of North America, around 125 million years ago. Closely related to Polacanthus, it has a sacral shield and large shoulder spikes....
and Polocanthus. In the 1990s, the polocanthines were reclassified as primitive ankylosaurids, because they were mistakenly believed to have small tail-clubs; they are probably primitive ankylosaurids, but as a whole the polacanthines are poorly known. The group peaked in the Barremian age in North America

North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
and Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, and then vanished shortly after, replaced by more advanced ankylosauria

Ankylosauria

Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with Armour in the form of bony osteoderms....
ns.

History

The first Hylaeosaurus fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
s were discovered in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Su?seaxe , is a Historic counties of England in South East England England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex....
. Additional remains have been discovered on the Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is an England island and county, located 3-8 km from the south coast of the mainland, in the English Channel. It is situated south of the county of Hampshire and is separated from mainland Britain by the Solent....
(also part of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the List of islands by area, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is List of islands by population....
), and in Ardennes

Ardennes

The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and old mountains formed on the Givetian Ardennes mountains, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel....
, France

France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, though the remains from France may actually belong to a Polacanthus
Polacanthus

Polacanthus, deriving its name from the Ancient Greek poly-/p???- "many" and acantha/a?a??a "thorn" or "prickle", was an early armored, spiked, plant-eating ankylosaur from the early Cretaceous period....
. Mantell published a lithograph of his find in The Geology of the South-east of England in 1833; and another drawing in the fourth edition of The Wonders of Geology, in 1840.

Gideon Mantell

Gideon Mantell

Forest

File:Stara planina suma.jpgA forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on various criteria....
lizard", after the Tilgate Forest in which it was discovered. Later, he claimed that it meant "Weald

Weald

The Weald is the name given to a physiographic area in south-east England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North Downs and the South Downs....
en lizard" ("wealden" being another word for forest), in reference to the Wealden Group, the name for the early Cretaceous geological

Geology

Geology is the science and study of the solid and liquid matter that constitute the Earth. The field of geology encompasses the study of the composition, structural geology, physical properties, dynamics, and History of the Earth of Earth materials, and the processes by which they are formed, moved, and changed....
formation in which the dinosaur was first found.

In any case, the species epithet armatus, or "armored", was chosen by Mantell because there

"appears every reason to conclude that either its back was armed with a formidable row of spines, constituting a dermal fringe, or that its tail possessed the same appendage".

External links

at DinoData.
, Paper Dinosaurs, 1824-1969, from Linda Hall Library. ()
, from DinoWight Extra.
, by Justin Tweet, from Thescelosaurus!