Hylaeosaurus armatus

Source: http://spinops.blogspot.com/2012/07/hylaeosaurus-armatus.html

Name: Hylaeosaurus armatus

Name Meaning: Reptile of the Forest

First Described: 1833

Described By: Mantell

Classification: Dinosauria, Ornithischia, Genasauria, Thyreophora, Thyreophoroidea, Eurypoda, Ankylosauria, Nodosauridae, Polacanthinae

Hylaeosaurus is an actually fairly famous dinosaur - or at least, it should be - as it was one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered, and was one of the three dinosaurs Richard Owen based his definition of Dinosauria on. Not as famous as the other two, Megalosaurus and Iguanodon, but that is hardly its fault. Well, maybe it is - much of its anatomy is unknown. It lived about 136 million years ago, in the Valanginian age of the Early Cretaceous period. It was found in West Sussex, England, and has gone through a variety of interesting reconstructions. Given it was discovered in the early days of dinosaur paleontology, a good portion of its reconstructions are of it looking like a deformed lizard. The fact that it was closer to being a bird than a lizard was not a fact early discoverers were aware of. It would have been about five meters long, and had curved spines at the shoulder. It would have been a Nodosaur, the group of Ankylosaurs that did not have clubs at the ends of their tails, and a fairly basal one at that.

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylaeosaurus 

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