Pronunciation: HAY-stuh-SOR-us
Meaning: Haesta's lizard
Author/s: Upchurch et al. (2015)
Synonyms: Pelorosaurus becklesii
First Discovery: Hastings, England
Discovery Chart Position: #896
Haestasaurus becklesii
Samuel Beckles found the fragmentary remains of what would become Haestasaurus way back in 1852, in England, at an unknown coastal locality, then they spent nearly four decades in his private collection after being assigned to the troublesome sauropod Pelorosaurus as a second species — Pelorosaurus becklesii — by Gideon Mantell.
There are enough reasons right there to ensure palaeontologists wouldn't so much as poke these remnants with the proverbial stick. However, they've attracted more than their fair share of attention down the years, being assigned to at least four different critters by over a dozen exuberant experts who just couldn't let go. They were onto something, you know. But only now is the significance of this find coming into focus.
The now-named Haestasaurus potentially represents the earliest known European titanosaur, provides a glimpse of sauropod evolution from a period (Berriasian-Valanginian) just after an extinction event around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary, and includes the first dinosaurian skin impression recognised by science. It's still something of an enigma, though, despite being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century by Upchurch, Mannion and Taylor in 2015, because its remains are meagre no matter which way you slice them and hardly enough to deduce its relationships to other macronarian sauropods.
The now-named Haestasaurus potentially represents the earliest known European titanosaur, provides a glimpse of sauropod evolution from a period (Berriasian-Valanginian) just after an extinction event around the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary, and includes the first dinosaurian skin impression recognised by science. It's still something of an enigma, though, despite being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century by Upchurch, Mannion and Taylor in 2015, because its remains are meagre no matter which way you slice them and hardly enough to deduce its relationships to other macronarian sauropods.
(Beckles and Haesta's lizard)Etymology
Haestasaurus is derived from "Haesta" (the Saxon warlord whose people settled the area of Hastings — known in ancient texts as Hæstingas ["the settlement of Hæsta] — and gave the town its name) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The species epithet, becklesii, honors Samuel Husband Beckles who discovered the specimen.
Zoobank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:4895F0CD-F39B-4ED0-B1FC-C8D0C3BC45B1.
Discovery
The remains of Haestasaurus were discovered in the Hastings Beds Group (exact locality unknown), on the coast near Hastings, East Sussex, southeast England, United Kingdom, by Beckles in 1852.The holotype is an associated left humerus (upper arm bone), ulna and radius (lower arm bones) catalogued as NHMUK R1870, and a portion of skin impression from near the elbow region catalogued as NHMUK R1868. The 1891 catalogue of Beckles collection mentions a metacarpal (hand bone), now catalogued as NHMUK R1869, that was considered part of Pelorosaurus becklesii, but it's too large and robust to belong to NHMUK R1870.
