ALCOVASAURUS
a plated dacentrurine stegosaurid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of North America.
Pronunciation: al-KO-vuh-SOR-us
Meaning: Alcova lizard
Author/s: Galton and Carpenter (
2016)
Synonyms: See
below
First Discovery: Wyoming, USA
Acta Ordinal: #927
Alcovasaurus longispinus
(Alcova Lizard, with Long Tail Spines)Etymology
Alcovasaurus is derived from "Alcova" (for Alcova Quarry) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The
species epithet,
longispinus, is derived from the Latin "longus" (long) and "spina" (spine), in reference to the long tail spines.
Stegosaurus longispinus (Gilmore, 1914)
Kentrosaurus longispinus (Olshevsky and Ford, 1993)
Natronasaurus longispinus (Ulansky, 2014)
Miragaia longispinus (Costa, Mateus and Joger, 2019)
Discovery
The remains of
Alcovasaurus were discovered in the Morrison Formation at Alcova Quarry in Natrona County, Wyoming, USA, by Professors William Harlow Reed and A.C. Dart of the University of Wyoming, in July 1908.
The
holotype (UW 20503—originally UW D54) is a partial skeleton, consisting of forty-two assorted vertebrae, a partial pelvic girdle including a fragmentary sacrum, the right thigh, several ribs and four tail spines.
Estimations
Timeline:
Era: Mesozoic
Epoch: Late Jurassic
Stage: Kimmeridgian
Age range: 150 mya
Stats:
Est. max. length: ?
Est. max. hip height: ?
Est. max. weight: ?
Diet: Herbivore
References
• Gilmore CW (1914) "
Osteology of the armoured Dinosauria in the United States National Museum, with special reference to the genus Stegosaurus".
United States National Museum Bulletin 89: 1-143.
• Olshevsky G and Ford TL (1993) "The origin and evolution of the stegosaurs".
Kyoryugaku Saizensen: Dino-Frontline. Gakken Mook, 4: 65-103.
• Paul GS (2010) "
The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs: Second Edition".
• Ulansky RE (2014) "
Evolution of the stegosaurs (Dinosauria; Ornithischia)".
Dinologia, 1-35. [in Russian].
• Galton PM and Carpenter K (2016) "The plated dinosaur
Stegosaurus longispinus Gilmore, 1914 (Dinosauria: Ornithischia; Upper Jurassic, western USA), type species of
Alcovasaurus n. gen.".
Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen, 279(2): 185-208. DOI: 10.1127/njgpa/2016/0551.
• Costa F, Mateus O and Joger U (2019) "Dacentrurine stegosaurs (Dinosauria): A new specimen of
Miragaia longicollum from the Late Jurassic of Portugal resolves taxonomical validity and shows the occurrence of the clade in North America".
PLOS ONE, 14(11): e0224263. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0224263.
• Sánchez-Fenollosa S, Escaso F and Cobos A (2024) "A new specimen of
Dacentrurus armatus Owen, 1875 (Ornithischia: Thyreophora) from the Upper Jurassic of Spain and its taxonomic relevance in the European stegosaurian diversity".
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 203(3): zlae074. DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlae074.
• Costa F, Maidment SCR, Sequero C and Crespo VD (2025) "
Miragaia longicollum MG 4863: New fossil and historical evidence from the most complete stegosaur from Europe".
Comunicações Geológicas, 112(1): 35-58. DOI: 10.34637/xs1n-3d27.
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To cite this page:
Atkinson, L.
"
ALCOVASAURUS :: from DinoChecker's dinosaur archive".
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