After only 162 years, the first complete dinosaur skeleton to be recovered has finally been properly reconstructed and studied. Found on the shore beneath Black Ven at Charmouth in west Dorset, the 193-million-year-old fossilized remains of a Scelidosaurus, spent over a century and a half stored at the Natural History Museum in London before being fully described and analyzed by Dr. David Norman of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.
Then, around 2017, Norman took a fresh look at Scelidosaurus and not only produced a proper reconstruction but also where it sits in the evolutionary tree of the dinosaurs, which it is helping to tweak a bit.
Where Scelidosaurus sits in the evolutionary tree University of Cambridge
Until recently, scientists thought that dinosaurs fell into two groups: the saurischians (lizard-hipped) and the ornithischians (bird-hipped), but Norman and his students have called that into question, stating that bird-hipped dinosaurs and lizard-hipped dinosaurs have a common ancestor, with Scelidosaurus sitting close to the origin of the ornithischians. In addition, Scelidosaurus has displayed some firsts.
“Nobody knew that the skull had horns on its back edge,” says Norman. “It also had several bones that have never before been recognized in any other dinosaur. It is also clear from the rough texturing of the skull bones that it was, in life, covered by hardened horny scutes – a little bit like the scutes plastered over the surface of the skulls of living turtles.”
Scelidosaurus also had an array of stud-like bony spikes and plates to protect its skin, which made scientists conclude that it’s an ancestor of the stegosaurs, with their spine plates and spiked tail, and the ankylosaurs, with their armored hide and mace-like tail. Now, the complete skeleton shows that it is a relative of only the ankylosaurs.
https://newatlas.com/biology/first-complete-dinosaur-skeleton-reconstructed-after-162-years/
