Pronunciation: ah-vuh-LOW-nee-uh
Meaning: for Avalon
Author/s: Seeley (1898)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Somerset, England
Discovery Chart Position: #
Avalonia sanfordi
Long before the advent of scrumpy cider, Somerset was home to Avalonia, a dinosaur named after Avalon—funnily enough, the "Isle of Apples"—where Excalibur was forged and King Arthur was taken to recover from his wounds. But during the Permian, Avalonia was the name of a subcontinent, pushed right into the middle of Pangaea by massive tectonic movement and partially flooded by a shallow sea.
When Pangaea split during the Jurassic, Avalonia burst forth attached to Laurasia (the rest became Gondwana), and when Laurasia broke up during the Cretaceous, half of Avalonia went with Eurasia and the other half was stuck to what would become the east coast of North America. As continents continued to shift and rotate, Avalonia was bashed from pillar to post and subsequently left bits of itself attached to both sides of the Gibraltar Strait, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ireland, and the south-western edge of the Iberian Peninsula. What's more, Avalonia underlies much of the South West coast of Britain, the area including Somerset, the English county in which Avalonia the dinosaur was discovered!
Sadly, despite that amazing adventure, Avalonia is only a shadow of the dinosaur it used to be. The name was already occupied by a genus of trilobite named by Walcott in 1889, its holotype teeth actually belonged to an archosaur, and much of the material assigned to it since discovery was suspected of belonging to a hotch-potch of different critters. By the time Kuhn eventually got around to renaming it Avalonianus in 1961, it was on borrowed time and was finally put out of its misery in 1985. You just can't trust a dinosaur with "anus" in its name.
Peter Galton eventually struck Avalonianus from the dinosaur register, but not before salvaging diagnostic sauropodomorph postcrania (non-skull skeleton) and using it as the foundation for an all-new genus, though the Arthurian theme lives on. See Camelotia borealis.
Pangaea:
An ancient supercontinent including "all the land", surrounded by Panthalassa, "all the sea". Gondwana:
An ancient southern supercontinent including modern Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India, and Madagascar. Laurasia:
An ancient northern supercontinent including modern North America, Europe, and Asia (excluding India and Arabia). Eurasia:
The current combined landmass of Europe and Asia.
When Pangaea split during the Jurassic, Avalonia burst forth attached to Laurasia (the rest became Gondwana), and when Laurasia broke up during the Cretaceous, half of Avalonia went with Eurasia and the other half was stuck to what would become the east coast of North America. As continents continued to shift and rotate, Avalonia was bashed from pillar to post and subsequently left bits of itself attached to both sides of the Gibraltar Strait, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ireland, and the south-western edge of the Iberian Peninsula. What's more, Avalonia underlies much of the South West coast of Britain, the area including Somerset, the English county in which Avalonia the dinosaur was discovered!
Sadly, despite that amazing adventure, Avalonia is only a shadow of the dinosaur it used to be. The name was already occupied by a genus of trilobite named by Walcott in 1889, its holotype teeth actually belonged to an archosaur, and much of the material assigned to it since discovery was suspected of belonging to a hotch-potch of different critters. By the time Kuhn eventually got around to renaming it Avalonianus in 1961, it was on borrowed time and was finally put out of its misery in 1985. You just can't trust a dinosaur with "anus" in its name.
Peter Galton eventually struck Avalonianus from the dinosaur register, but not before salvaging diagnostic sauropodomorph postcrania (non-skull skeleton) and using it as the foundation for an all-new genus, though the Arthurian theme lives on. See Camelotia borealis.
Pangaea:
An ancient supercontinent including "all the land", surrounded by Panthalassa, "all the sea". Gondwana:
An ancient southern supercontinent including modern Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, India, and Madagascar. Laurasia:
An ancient northern supercontinent including modern North America, Europe, and Asia (excluding India and Arabia). Eurasia:
The current combined landmass of Europe and Asia.
(for Avalon and Sanford)Etymology
Avalonia is named after Avalon, the apple-rich island of Arthurian legend — a paradise of magic, healing, and otherworldly abundance, where Excalibur was forged and Arthur was taken to be tended by Morgan le Fay after the Battle of Camlann.
The species epithet, sanfordi, honours William Ayshford Sanford, who published the fossils in 1894 but declined to name them.
