"Ischyrosaurus" was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, England.
History and Taxonomy[]
Credit: Nima Sassani
"Ischyrosaurus" is based on a partial humerus (NHMUK R41626) found in 1868. John Hulke described it briefly in 1869, then named it in 1874. The genus is preoccupied by a name Edward Drinker Cope coined in 1869. It was once synonymized with the Early Cretaceous-age Pelorosaurus. Its name meaning is: "strong lizard", for its large humerus; name in quotation marks because it is preoccupied.
Similiar to most sauropod remains from the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous of Europe, it became part of the Pelorosaurus-Ornithopsis taxonomic tangle, being referred first to Ornithopsis as O. manseli, then to Pelorosaurus as P. manseli. Upchurch et al., in their review of sauropods (2004), listed it as a dubious sauropod. A 2010 overview of Late Jurassic sauropods from Dorset noted that Ischyrosaurus shared features seen in both Rebbachisauridae and Titanosauriformes, but lacked features to nail down its exact phylogenetic position.
Paleobiology[]
As a sauropod, it would have been a large quadrupedal herbivore.