#vectipelta

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Vectipelta head study

Practicing dinosaur anatomy and textures yep

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Hi there!

Vectipelta barretti from the Early Cretaceous, new ankylosaurid described in the Wessex Formation, England

[new-dinosaurs]

Vectipelta barretti Pond et al., 2023 (new genus and species)

(Preserved bones and schematic skeletal of Vectipelta barretti [scale bar = 1 m], from Pond et al., 2023)

Meaning of name: Vectipelta = Isle of Wight shield [in Latin]; barretti = for Paul M. Barrett [British paleontologist]

Age: Early Cretaceous (Barremian)

Where found: Wessex Formation, Isle of Wight, U.K.

How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual including much of the vertebral column, some limb bone fragments, and many armor plates. Some additional ankylosaur material from the same locality may belong to the same species (or even the same individual), but this cannot be confirmed at present.

Notes: Vectipelta was an ankylosaur, a group of armored herbivorous dinosaurs. Two other ankylosaurs have known from the Early Cretaceous of England since the 19th Century, the older Hylaeosaurus and the younger Polacanthus. However, Vectipelta appears to have been only distantly related to either of them, and may have instead been more closely related to the club-tailed ankylosaurine ankylosaurs. Traditionally, ankylosaur fossils from the Wessex Formation have often been classified as Polacanthus by default, but the discovery of Vectipelta indicates that this is not always a safe assumption to make.

Reference: Pond, S., S.-J. Strachan, T.J. Raven, M.I. Simpson, K. Morgan, and S.C R. Maidment. 2023. Vectipelta barretti, a new ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, UK. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 21: 2210577. doi: 10.1080/14772019.2023.2210577

[totaldino]

Vectipelta

Vectipelta was a large herbivore with short legs and a wide, flat body, covered in osteoderms and spikes. Although it was discovered in England, Vectipelta was not closely related to other ankylosaurs in the same area. It was actually most closely related to Chinese nodosaurs, suggesting dinosaurs moved freely from Asia to Europe in the Early Cretaceous.