Pronunciation: lek-SOH-vi-SOR-us
Meaning: Lexovii lizard
Author/s: Hoffstetter (1957)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Cambridgeshire, England
Discovery Chart Position: #201
Lexovisaurus durobrivensis
The dinosaur literature is awash with tales of calamity including (but by no means limited to) raising entire genera based on fossils that turned out to belong to the big hitters, such as Seismosaurus (Diplodocus), Agathaumas and Polyonax (probably Triceratops), and Manospondylus (T.rex). But if you want the real juice on monumental muddles and whatnot, the obscure English dinosaurs are the go-to critters. The Late Jurassic Lexovisaurus is a prime example.
Initially mentioned by English geologist Henry Bolingbroke Woodward in September 1885 after their discovery at a brick pit in Tanholt, the remains that would become Lexovisaurus were assigned by Hulke in 1887 to Omosaurus as a second species: Omosaurus durobrivensis, referring to the old Roman town of Durobrivae in the Parish of Water Newton, Cambridgeshire. As it transpired, the name Omosaurus was already occupied by an American phytosaur (Omosaurus perplexus) that Joseph Leidy described in 1856, so Frederick Augustus Lucas proposed Dacentrurus as a replacement for the stegosaur material in 1902. However, he only officially renamed the type specimen (Omosaurus armatus), so we didn't see Dacentrurus hastiger, phillipsi, lennieri or Dacentrurus durobrivensis in print until Edwin Hennig published them in 1915.
With the discovery of a new stegosaurid specimen (MHBR 001) at Argences in 1957, Robert Hoffstetter reviewed all known stegosaurid material and realised that his new find was closest to Dacentrurus durobrivensis which, at the time, included two "armour plates" that O.C. Marsh identified as skull bones from a giant fish in 1888 and which A.S. Woodward named Leedsichthys the following year. But Hoffstetter also realised that Dacentrurus durobrivensis was unlike any other stegosaur from anywhere, so he renamed it Lexovisaurus in honour of Lexovii—the ancient Gallic peoples who later inhabited the same region of France (Normandy) as his new specimen. At the same time, he assigned MHBR 001 to it, along with Baron Franz Nopcsa's 1911-named Stegosaurus priscus and more fragmentary material from the same Fletton brick pit.
During a review of Stegosauria in 2008, Susannah Maidment tagged the Lexovisaurus holotype a nomen dubium because it lacks diagnostic features, then snaffled BMNH R3167 (Stegosaurus priscus) and Hoffstetter's French material to raise a new genus: Loricatosaurus. That means Lexovisaurus has been trimmed back to its initial Cambridgeshire remains, so it's now entirely English and has nothing to do with the French folk that inspired its name. It also limits Lexovisaurus to the fossils it currently owns because a dubious taxon can not have further remains assigned to it.
Initially mentioned by English geologist Henry Bolingbroke Woodward in September 1885 after their discovery at a brick pit in Tanholt, the remains that would become Lexovisaurus were assigned by Hulke in 1887 to Omosaurus as a second species: Omosaurus durobrivensis, referring to the old Roman town of Durobrivae in the Parish of Water Newton, Cambridgeshire. As it transpired, the name Omosaurus was already occupied by an American phytosaur (Omosaurus perplexus) that Joseph Leidy described in 1856, so Frederick Augustus Lucas proposed Dacentrurus as a replacement for the stegosaur material in 1902. However, he only officially renamed the type specimen (Omosaurus armatus), so we didn't see Dacentrurus hastiger, phillipsi, lennieri or Dacentrurus durobrivensis in print until Edwin Hennig published them in 1915.
With the discovery of a new stegosaurid specimen (MHBR 001) at Argences in 1957, Robert Hoffstetter reviewed all known stegosaurid material and realised that his new find was closest to Dacentrurus durobrivensis which, at the time, included two "armour plates" that O.C. Marsh identified as skull bones from a giant fish in 1888 and which A.S. Woodward named Leedsichthys the following year. But Hoffstetter also realised that Dacentrurus durobrivensis was unlike any other stegosaur from anywhere, so he renamed it Lexovisaurus in honour of Lexovii—the ancient Gallic peoples who later inhabited the same region of France (Normandy) as his new specimen. At the same time, he assigned MHBR 001 to it, along with Baron Franz Nopcsa's 1911-named Stegosaurus priscus and more fragmentary material from the same Fletton brick pit.
During a review of Stegosauria in 2008, Susannah Maidment tagged the Lexovisaurus holotype a nomen dubium because it lacks diagnostic features, then snaffled BMNH R3167 (Stegosaurus priscus) and Hoffstetter's French material to raise a new genus: Loricatosaurus. That means Lexovisaurus has been trimmed back to its initial Cambridgeshire remains, so it's now entirely English and has nothing to do with the French folk that inspired its name. It also limits Lexovisaurus to the fossils it currently owns because a dubious taxon can not have further remains assigned to it.
(Lexovii lizard from Durobrivae)Etymology
Lexovisaurus is derived from "Lexovii" (an ancient Celtic people of the Calavados region of Normandy, northwestern France) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).The species epithet, durobrivensis, is derived from "Durobrivae" (for a Roman settlement in Cambridgeshire) and the Latin "ensis" (from).
Discovery
Alfred Nicholson Leeds discovered the remains of Lexovisaurus in the Peterborough Member of the Oxford Clay Formation, in a brick pit at the Hamlet of Tanholt, close to Eye, Water Newton, west of Peterborough, (historically in Northamptonshire but now part of Cambridgeshire), England, in the early 1880s. Later workers assumed, erroneously, that the specimen was found at Fletton brick pit 2, Peterborough, England, simply because that is where Leeds did most of his collecting.
The holotype (BMNH R1989-1992, originally "Omosaurus" durobrivensis) consists of a partial sacrum and both ilia (hip bones), a left femur (thigh), a metatarsal and a toe bone. Hoffstetter's specimen (MHBR 001, found in an unnamed formation of Le Fresne d’Argences, near Lisieux in the Calavados region of Normandy, northwestern France, in 1957) consists of cervical, dorsal and caudal (neck, back and tail) vertebrae, a left humerus, a right femur, tibia and fibula, and some dermal armour. Also included is a large "spike" that Hoffstetter placed on the shoulder, Galton placed on the hip and Maidment placed on the tail. Nopcsa's "Stegosaurus priscus" specimen (BMNH R3167, including two cervical vertebrae, six dorsal vertebrae, 16 caudal vertebrae, a right humerus, right ulna, carpus, two metacarpals (one incomplete), partial ilia, partial right ischium and pubis, left femur, left partial tibia and partial fibula with fused tarsals, and dermal armour) was found in the Oxford Clay of Fletton, near Peterborough, England, in 1901.
The latter two specimens were referred to Loricatosaurus priscus by Maidment in 2008.
