Dinodocus

Owen, 1884 die-NOD-o-kus Nomen dubium

From Greek 'deinos' (terrible, fearfully great) and 'dokos' (beam); meaning 'terrible beam', a reference to the large size of the limb bones.

121.4–100.5 million years ago Aptian–Albian, Early Cretaceous

Early Cretaceous stages

Dinodocus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur, named by Richard Owen in 1884, with the type species, Dinodocus mackesoni. The name is now usually considered a nomen dubium. The name was given to some fossil bones from the Lower Greensand Group (Lower Cretaceous) of Hythe, Kent, England, were formerly placed in the genus Pelorosaurus (Mantell, 1850), but a review by Upchurch and colleagues (2004) concluded that Dinodocus is a nomen dubium.

Species

Dinodocus mackesoni Owen, 1884 Nomen dubium

Type species

Honors H. B. Mackeson, who discovered the holotype skeleton in 1840 in the Lower Greensand quarries near Hythe, Kent.

Holotype: BMNH 14695 , Natural History Museum
Material: Fragmentary postcranial bones including portions of the humerus, ulna, ilium, pubis, ischium, femur, tibia, fibula, and metatarsals.
Horizon: Lower Greensand Group, Aptian–Albian, Early Cretaceous , 121.4–100.5 million years ago
Locality: near Hythe, Kent, United Kingdom

References

Owen, R. (1851). Gigantic Fossil Saurian from the Lower Green-sand at Hythe. Monographs of the Palaeontographical Society 5: 47-58.
Original osteological description of the Mackeson specimen. Owen provisionally referred the bones to Polyptychodon and concluded the animal had been a marine reptile — predates the name Dinodocus.
owen1851a
Owen, R. (1884). Index entry on p. ix of volume II. A History of British Fossil Reptiles, volume II. Cassell & Company, London.
Index caption that silently renames the Mackeson specimen Dinodocus mackesoni — the first appearance of the genus name, but with no diagnosis or description.
owen1884a
Woodward, A. S. (1908). Note on Dinodocus mackesoni, a cetiosaurian from the Lower Greensand of Kent. Geological Magazine 5(5): 204-206.
Re-examines the BM 14695 collection, corrects several of Owen's element identifications, and proposes that Dinodocus is a junior synonym of Pelorosaurus.
woodward1908a
Upchurch, P.; Barrett, P. M.; Dodson, P. (2004). Sauropoda. The Dinosauria, Second Edition (Weishampel, D. B.; Dodson, P.; Osmólska, H., eds.) 259-322. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Treats Dinodocus as Sauropoda indet. and declares it a nomen dubium; notes McIntosh's (1990) referral of D. mackesoni to Pelorosaurus but treats both as invalid.
upchurch2004a
Jones, B. (2026). The Princeton Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs: Sauropods. Princeton University Press.
Source of the body length estimate.
jones2026b
Mantell, G. A. (1850). On the Pelorosaurus: an undescribed gigantic terrestrial reptile, whose remains are associated with those of the Iguanodon and other Saurians, in the strata of Tilgate Forest, in Sussex. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 140: 379-390. doi:10.1098/rstl.1850.0017
Originally placed the Dinodocus material in Pelorosaurus.
mantell1850a
McIntosh, J. S. (1990). Sauropoda. The Dinosauria (Weishampel, D. B.; Dodson, P.; Osmólska, H., eds.) 345-401. University of California Press, Berkeley. mcintosh1990a