Day 381#: Anoplosaurus curtonotus
Today's animal of the day is Anoplosaurus curtonotus!
Image credit: cisiopurple on DeviantArt
This species of herbivorous dinosaur lived during the Early Cretaceous period in what is now England. Its genus name means "unarmored lizard" because, despite being a member of the clade Ankylosauria, its remains were found without any armor plating, like its relatives had. That's not to say Anoplosaurus didn't have armor when it was alive; its armor just didn't fossilize for some reason. In fact, for a while, there was some serious paleontological debate over whether this species should be classified along with the Thyreophorans (the armored dinosaurs) or with the Ornithopods (which includes dinosaurs like hadrosaurs and iguanodontids). However, nowadays most paleontologists agree that it did belong in the Thyreophoran group and additionally is a nodosaurid, which were a group of ankylosaurs that were armored but lacked clubbed tails.
Image credit: Harry Seeley
Anoplosaurus was first unearthed in 1878 and a year later was described by British paleontologist Harry Govier Seeley. It is known from very fragmentary remains that consisted of a bit of jawbone, some vertebrae, and a handful of leg and foot bones. Seeley estimated that Anoplosaurus was around 5 ft long and believed that, due to its small size, this specimen was possibly a juvenile. As I mentioned before, Seeley wasn't really quite sure exactly what type of dinosaur Anoplosaurus was, but suspected that it might have been related to dinosaurs like Scelidosaurus and Polacanthus. A second, larger species of Anoplosaurus (A. major) was described at around the same time by Seeley; however, this second species turned out to just be a chimeric combo of some armored dinosaur bones mixed with those of some unknown iguanodontid. No other Anoplosaurus fossils have been discovered, so not much else is known about this dinosaur.
