NEW DATA ON SCELIDOSAURUS

[darren.naish@port.ac.uk]

On Sunday 9th June Channel 4 TV here in the UK 
broadcast the pilot episode of 'Dinosaur Detectives', a 
(planned) series in which a group of palaeontologists and 
geologists march around the country investigating alleged 
unsolved palaeontological mysteries. The pilot concerned a 
recently discovered _Scelidosaurus_ specimen currently 
being prepped by David Sole (a well known Dorset 
collector and preparator). This specimen is familiar to most 
British fossil collectors, palaeontologists etc, but this is the 
first time it has been given any serious hype. Incidentally, 
this specimen is not the same as the juvenile (with skin) at 
Bristol, nor the other juvenile figured in David Lambert's 
_Ultimate Dinosaur Book_ (and Carpenter 2001).

The programme featured the usual shots of people walking 
on the beach, driving land rovers, stepping out of land 
rovers and leaning on land rovers etc and followed the 
adventures of Drs Dave Martill, Sarah Gabbott and 
someone else whose name I can't recall (he was a 
sedimentologist) as they investigated the Lower Jurassic 
geology of Lyme Regis, Dorset. Personally I found the 
programme pretty dull (it mostly concentrated on 
sedimentology, environment of deposition etc and did not 
focus that much on the dinosaur) but it seems to have gone 
down pretty well. As usual the CG animation and artwork 
was poor.

My belated reason for writing this email is that the new 
_Scelidosaurus_ specimen is absolutely unbelievable: more 
complete than the type and with a slew of startling new 
features. Hopefully more will appear on it soon, but for 
those of you who will not have seen the programme, here 
are some highlights.

The specimen is big (at least on par with, and maybe bigger 
than, the holotype), preserved in a nodule and fully 
articulated, with all the armour in-situ. As in the type 
(strangely), the snout rostral to the ant fenestra is missing. It 
has tricorns but also has curving caudolateral bony horns on 
the squamosals (do not have my copy of Blows 2001 to 
hand and haven't allocated his terminology to memory). I 
could not see a lateral scute on the lower jaw. I am told that 
cervical half-rings are preserved but I was unable to see 
these. Several scute rows are preserved on the side of the 
body: they appear larger and more closely-packed than in 
the type, and scute rows also run down _all_ of the limbs. 
Two rows run down the hindlimbs; one lateral, the other 
cranial. On the tibia at least, the scutes are not conical but 
actually hooked, with the hook pointing distally. Tracy has 
pointed out that, in contrast to most depictions, 
_Scutellosaurus lawleri_ has a double row of scutes along 
the dorsal midline. Does _Scelidosaurus_ also have a 
double row, as opposed to the single row depicted by Greg 
Paul? The answer is yes and furthermore, there is also a 
symmetrical double row of scutes along the ventral midline 
of the tail. This was determined by CT-scanning. In cross-
section the tail therefore has four scute rows. Sorry Jim, this 
shows your suggestion of rotated lateral polacanthid-like 
tail scutes is probably incorrect:)

Given that this animal is altogether a spikier, more armour-
clad version of the holotype, it might be a male of the same 
species. The alternative is that it's a new species, and both 
ideas were mentioned by Dave during the programme. One 
final note, the specimen is currently in a private collection. 
There are plans for it to be purchased by a museum 
however.

We leave this weekend for our _Leedsichthys_ dig in 
Peterborough. Alan Dawn told me that the same quarry also 
contains at least one plesiosaur and one ichthyosaur, so if 
the fish isn't so good at least we have something else to play 
with;)

Darren Naish
School of Earth & Environmental Sciences
University of Portsmouth
Burnaby Building
Burnaby Road                           email: 
darren.naish@port.ac.uk
Portsmouth UK                          tel: 023 92846045                   
PO1 3QL                                www.palaeobiology.co.uk