Thecocoelurus
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Thecocoelurus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous,129–125 Ma |
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| Holotype vertebrae | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Clade: | †Ornithomimosauria |
| Genus: |
†Thecocoelurus Huene, 1923 |
| Species: | †T. daviesi |
| Binomial name | |
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Thecocoelurus daviesi Seeley, 1888 |
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| Synonyms | |
Thecocoelurus is a dubious genus of theropod dinosaur from the early Cretaceous period of England. It is paleontologically significant for being one of the first two ornithomimosaur specimens known from England (along with Valdoraptor), and represents the earliest record of ornithomimosaurs in the world.
Thecocoelurus is known only from half of a single cervical vertebra, discovered by the Rev. William Darwin Fox on the Isle of Wight during the 19th century. After his death the Fox Collection was acquired by the British Museum of Natural History. William Davies was the first to notice the specimen and assumed a close affinity with Coelurus.
It was described by Harry Govier Seeley in 1888. Seeley named the fossil Thecospondylus daviesi, referring it to a genus he had named earlier for the incomplete cast of a sacrum. However, in 1901 Baron Franz Nopcsa renamed it Coelurus daviesi. In 1923 Friedrich von Huene decided that it should be removed from either Thecospondylus or Coelurus and given its own genus, Thecocoelurus. The generic name is a contraction of "Thecospondylus" and "Coelurus".
The holotype, NHMUK PV R181, was found in debris from a layer of the Wessex Formation, dating from the Barremian. It consists of the anterior end, about a third, of a cervical vertebra estimated by Seeley to have been nine centimetres long.
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