Pronunciation: nuth-EE-teez
Meaning: Monitor (lizard)
Author/s: Owen (1854)
Synonyms: Megalosaurus destructor
First Discovery: Dorset, England
Discovery Chart Position: #12
Nuthetes destructor
Like many dinosaurs discovered in the mid-1800s when the term "Dinosauria" was still a wee pup, Nuthetes has seen a lot of action despite being based on fossils that don't seem worth the bother, with its classification causing nothing but problems ever since Charles Willcox dragged a three-inch-long lump of lower jaw bone from Feather Quarry near Durston Bay and plonked it on Richard Owen's desk way back in 1854.
Owen originally classified Nuthetes as an extinct lizard and doubled down on that theory in 1878 with the discovery by Samuel Beckles of what he called "granicones"—small armour scutes—stuck in a slab of Purbeck limestone (also from Feather Quarry) alongside Nuthetes teeth that he found comparable to those of the extant lizard called Moloch. But by the following year, he had presumably changed his mind as he quietly slipped Nuthetes, hook, line and sinker, into a monograph on the Purbeck crocodilians. More than twelve decades passed before those "granicones" were identified as osteoderms from the legs or tail of a prehistoric turtle, possibly of the species Helochelydra anglica or "Tretosternon" bakewelli by Barrett, Clarke, Brinkman, Chapman and Ensom. But there were many twists and turns long before that.
From when it was named, it took Richard Lydekker a mere 34 years to realise that Nuthetes was actually a dinosaur of a type not specified. And then it gathered dust at the Dorset County Museum for almost half a century. In 1934, William Elgin Swinton thought Nuthetes was a juvenile member of the Megalosauridae, Rodney Steel went as far as renaming it Megalosaurus destructor in 1970, and by 2002, Angela Milner suspected that its remains probably belonged to a subadult dromaeosaurid. In 2004, Steve Sweetman examined five specimens of fossil teeth from the Wealden and announced they all belonged to Nuthetes destructor — identified by him as a velociraptorine dromaeosaurid closely related to Velociraptor, no less — which would make Nuthetes one of the oldest known dromaeosaurids, the first known from England, and the first to be described from anywhere by some distance. That's assuming, of course, that his identification was correct.
However, its teeth — curved, serrated and blade-like — bear a striking similarity to those of Proceratosaurus, as do many instances of isolated so-called dromaeosaurid teeth from the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Europe, so they have as much chance of belonging to a proceratosaurid tyrannosauroid and being one of the oldest relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex. Larger teeth that have since been referred to Nuthetes seem a closer match to those of Dromaeosauroides, another possible dromaeosaurid and Denmark's sole dinosaur, which is known only from a couple of teeth, and perhaps some fishbone-flecked fossilised poop.
Owen originally classified Nuthetes as an extinct lizard and doubled down on that theory in 1878 with the discovery by Samuel Beckles of what he called "granicones"—small armour scutes—stuck in a slab of Purbeck limestone (also from Feather Quarry) alongside Nuthetes teeth that he found comparable to those of the extant lizard called Moloch. But by the following year, he had presumably changed his mind as he quietly slipped Nuthetes, hook, line and sinker, into a monograph on the Purbeck crocodilians. More than twelve decades passed before those "granicones" were identified as osteoderms from the legs or tail of a prehistoric turtle, possibly of the species Helochelydra anglica or "Tretosternon" bakewelli by Barrett, Clarke, Brinkman, Chapman and Ensom. But there were many twists and turns long before that.
From when it was named, it took Richard Lydekker a mere 34 years to realise that Nuthetes was actually a dinosaur of a type not specified. And then it gathered dust at the Dorset County Museum for almost half a century. In 1934, William Elgin Swinton thought Nuthetes was a juvenile member of the Megalosauridae, Rodney Steel went as far as renaming it Megalosaurus destructor in 1970, and by 2002, Angela Milner suspected that its remains probably belonged to a subadult dromaeosaurid. In 2004, Steve Sweetman examined five specimens of fossil teeth from the Wealden and announced they all belonged to Nuthetes destructor — identified by him as a velociraptorine dromaeosaurid closely related to Velociraptor, no less — which would make Nuthetes one of the oldest known dromaeosaurids, the first known from England, and the first to be described from anywhere by some distance. That's assuming, of course, that his identification was correct.
However, its teeth — curved, serrated and blade-like — bear a striking similarity to those of Proceratosaurus, as do many instances of isolated so-called dromaeosaurid teeth from the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Europe, so they have as much chance of belonging to a proceratosaurid tyrannosauroid and being one of the oldest relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex. Larger teeth that have since been referred to Nuthetes seem a closer match to those of Dromaeosauroides, another possible dromaeosaurid and Denmark's sole dinosaur, which is known only from a couple of teeth, and perhaps some fishbone-flecked fossilised poop.
Etymology
Nuthetes is an abbreviation of the Greek "nouthetetes" ("one who admonishes" or "a monitor"), in reference to the resemblance of its fossil teeth (so Owen thought) to those of modern monitor lizards, who occasionally stand on their two hind legs and appear to "monitor" their surroundings, hence the name. The species epithet (or specific name), destructor, is Latin for "destroyer", in reference to "the adaptations of the teeth for piercing, cutting, and lacerating the prey" (Owen, 1861).
Discovery
The first remains of Nuthetes were discovered by Charles Willcox, an amateur paleontologist from Swanage, at Feather Quarry near Durlston Bay in the Cherty Freshwater Member (or possibly the Worbarrow Tout Member) of the Lulworth Formation, Dorset, England, in the 1850s.
The holotype (DORCM G913) is a three-inch-long lump of left lower jaw bone with nine teeth. It was once thought to be lost but was rediscovered in the 1970s in the Dorset County Museum where it had always been.
In 2006, Pouech, Mazin and Billon-Bruyat referred a tooth (CHEm03.537) from Charente, France, to a Nuthetes sp.
