Horshamosaurus

Blows, 2015 HOR-shum-o-SAWR-us Nomen dubium

From Horsham (the West Sussex market town where the Horsham Museum holds the holotype) and Greek 'sauros' (lizard); meaning 'Horsham lizard'.

125.8–121.4 million years ago Barremian, Early Cretaceous

Early Cretaceous stages

Horshamosaurus is a genus of herbivorous ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Barremian stage of the Early Cretaceous of what is now England. The type species is Horshamosaurus rudgwickensis.

Species

Horshamosaurus rudgwickensis (Blows, 1996) Nomen dubium

Type species

First named as Polacanthus rudgwickensis

Named for the village of Rudgwick in West Sussex, where the holotype was excavated from the Rudgwick Brickworks marl quarry in 1985.

Holotype: HORSM 1988.1546 , Horsham Museum
Material: Fragmentary postcranial skeleton including a nearly complete anterior dorsal vertebra, dorsal and caudal centra, proximal left scapula with fused coracoid fragment, distal left humerus, the element originally identified as a tibia (reinterpreted as an ischium by Raven and colleagues 2020), rib fragments, and osteoderms.
Horizon: Weald Clay Group, Barremian, Early Cretaceous , 125.8–121.4 million years ago
Locality: Rudgwick Brickworks Company quarry, West Sussex, United Kingdom

Synonyms

Polacanthus rudgwickensis reassigned

Original description by Blows (1996) as a second species of Polacanthus; Blows (2015) raised it to its own genus, Horshamosaurus, with H. rudgwickensis as the type species.

References

Blows, W. T. (1996). A new species of Polacanthus (Ornithischia; Ankylosauria) from the Lower Cretaceous of Sussex, England. Geological Magazine 133(6): 671-682.
Original description of the type material under the name Polacanthus rudgwickensis, prior to the 2015 erection of Horshamosaurus.
blows1996a
Blows, W. T. (2015). British Polacanthid Dinosaurs — Observations on the History and Palaeontology of the UK Polacanthid Armoured Dinosaurs and their Relatives. British Polacanthid Dinosaurs 1-220. Siri Scientific Press.
Erects Horshamosaurus for "Polacanthus" rudgwickensis Blows 1996, proposing twelve diagnostic characters.
blows2015a
Raven, T. J.; Barrett, P. M.; Pond, S. B.; Maidment, S. C. R. (2020). Osteology and taxonomy of British Wealden Supergroup (Berriasian-Aptian) ankylosaurs (Ornithischia, Ankylosauria). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. doi:10.1080/02724634.2020.1826956
Systematically refutes each of Blows's (2015) twelve diagnostic characters, reinterprets the presumed tibia as an ischium, and treats H. rudgwickensis as a nomen dubium indeterminate nodosaurid.
raven2020a