Xenoposeidon
Name:
Xenoposeidon
(strange Poseidon).
Phonetic: Zee-noe-po-sy-den.
Named By: Mike P. Taylor & Darren Naish
- 2007.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Sauropoda.
Species: X. proneneukos
(type).
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Highly uncertain given the lack of fossil
remains, but estimates exist depending upon what type of sauropod
Xenoposeidon was. About 15 meters long if
built like a
brachiosaurid, alternatively 20 meters long if built like a
diplodocid.
Known locations: England, East Sussex -
Hastings Bed Formation, Ashdown Beds Formation?
Time period: Berriasian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial posterior portion of
a dorsal (back) vertebra.
Way
back during the 1890s, a fossil collector named Phillip James
Rufford discovered a partial dorsal vertebrae near Hastings in East
Sussex, England. Eventually catalogued as BMNH R2095, the
vertebrae was first thought to belong the genus Cetiosaurus
by Richard
Lydekker, before eventually becoming Pelorosaurus
conybeari. That
was about it for well over a hundred years as the specimen lay in
storage at the British Natural History Museum in London, England,
until one day a palaeontologist named Mike Taylor realised that this
partial vertebrae was quite unusual. Mike Taylor teamed up with
another palaeontologist named Darren Naish, and in 2007 a
description of this vertebra was not only published, but the
vertebrae became the holotype for a new genus of sauropod
dinosaur:
Xenoposeidon.
The
vertebrae though incomplete, displays a number of features that have
simply not been seen upon any other sauropod dinosaur, which actually
would make further remains attributable to Xenoposeidon
as long as
vertebrae were with them for comparison. The unfortunate thing about
the vertebrae however is that although we know it belonged to a
sauropod dinosaur, we don’t specifically know what kind.
Fortunately in their 2007 description Taylor and Naish considered
that Xenoposeidon may have been built either like
brachiosaurids
(similar to Brachiosaurus)
or diplodocids (similar to
Diplodocus).
If brachiosaurid, then the length may have been
about fifteen meters, but heavily built, while if diplodocid about
twenty meters but lightly built. Unfortunately it seems that the only
we anyone can be more certain about this is if more fossils can be
found. Later analysis by Taylor however, leans more towards Xenoposeidon
being a rebacchisaurid sauropod.
Further reading
- An unusual new neosauropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous
Hastings Beds Group of East Sussex, England. - Palaeontology
50(6):1547-1564. - Mike P. Taylor & Darren Naish
- 2007.
- Xenoposeidon is the earliest known rebbachisaurid
sauropod dinosaur.
PeerJ 6:e5212 - M. P. Taylor - 2018.
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