Pelorosaurus
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Pelorosaurus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, 132 Ma |
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| Holotype humerus | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | †Sauropodomorpha |
| Clade: | †Neosauropoda |
| Clade: | †Macronaria |
| Family: | †Brachiosauridae |
| Genus: |
†Pelorosaurus Mantell, 1850 |
| Species: | †P. brevis |
| Binomial name | |
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Pelorosaurus brevis (Owen, 1842) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Cetiosaurus brevis Owen, 1842 Cetiosaurus conybeari Melville, 1849 |
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Cetiosaurus brevis Owen, 1842 Cetiosaurus conybeari Melville, 1849
Pelorosaurus (/pᵻˌlɒroʊˈsɔːrəs/ pel-LORR-o-SAWR-əs; meaning "monstrous lizard") is the generic name of a sauropod dinosaur. Pelorosaurus was one of the first sauropod names ever. Remains referred to Pelorosaurus date from the Early Cretaceous period, about 140-125 million years ago and have been found in England and Portugal.
Many species have been named in the genus but today these are largely seen as belonging to other genera. The first named species of Pelorosaurus, P. conybeari, is a junior synonym of Cetiosaurus brevis.
Pelorosaurus was the first sauropod to be identified as a dinosaur, although it was not the first to be discovered. Richard Owen had discovered Cetiosaurus in 1841 but had incorrectly identified it as a gigantic sea-going crocodile-like reptile. Mantell identified Pelorosaurus as a dinosaur, living on land.
The taxonomic history of Pelorosaurus and Cetiosaurus, as noted by reviewers including Taylor and Naish, is confusing to the extreme. In 1842 Owen named several species of Cetiosaurus. Among them was Cetiosaurus brevis, based on several specimens from the early Cretaceous Period. Some of these, four caudal vertebrae, BMNH R2544–2547, and three chevrons, BMNH R2548–2550, found around 1825 by John Kingdon near Cuckfield in the Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation of the Hastings Beds, belonged to sauropods. Others however, among them perhaps the present specimen BMNH R10390 found near Sandown Bay on the Isle of Wight and BMNH R2133 and R2115 found near Hastings, actually belonged to some member of the Iguanodontidae. Noticing Owen's mistake in assigning iguanodont bones to Cetiosaurus, in 1849 comparative anatomist Alexander Melville renamed the sauropod bones Cetiosaurus conybeari.
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