Re: CRETACEOUS STEGOSAURS

["Simon M. Clabby" <dinowight@yahoo.co.uk>]

 --- Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Darren Naish wrote:
> 
> > >From the Early Cretaceous of England comes
> _Craterosaurus_ 
> >(?=_Regnosaurus_).
> >----------------------
> >
> >If these two are synonyms then you have it the
> wrong way round (though 
> >seeing as both should best be treated as nomina
> dubia this cannot of course 
> >be demonstrated).
> 
> I put _Craterosaurus_ first because it's been
> regarded as a stegosaurid for 
> quite a while now (once the "braincase" was
> identified as a vertebra).  
> _Regnosaurus_ was regarded as a sauropod (possibly
> the same as 
> _Chondrosteosaurus_, e.g., McIntosh [1990]) before
> Barrett and Upchurch 
> (1995) recognized it as a stegosaurian (a
> huaynagosaurid, if memory serves).

It's not the validity of the classification at naming
that the name that comes first relies on, but the
earliest useage of the name for the material. A good
point of reference would be Regnosaurus' fellow
Wealden-inhabitant, Ornithodesmus, which was
originally described as a pterosaur, but has since
been identified as a theropod. If other theropod
material in the Wealden named and described after
Ornithodesmus could be classified as being a synonym
of Ornithodesmus, it would be renamed as such.
> 
> As Darren notes, stegosaurs were globally
> distributed in the Early 
> Cretaceous.  Outside of Asia, EK stegosaurs are
> known only from fragmentary 
> material.  I don't know of any Late Cretaceous
> stegosaur material - unless 
> the Lameta taxon _Brachypodosaurus gravis_ (usually
> regarded as an 
> ankylosaur) is a stegosaur, as once thought.
> 
And Dravidosaurus, of course, the long-necked,
plateless, flippered marine stegosaur;)

Simon M. Clabby

P.S. Actually, by the way Darren, didn't you offer me
a picture of Regnosaurus for DinoWight ages ago?

=====
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   DinoWight- The Dinosaurs of the Isle of Wight
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