Thespesius
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Thespesius Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 66 Ma |
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| The syntype fossils | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | †Ornithischia |
| Suborder: | †Ornithopoda |
| Family: | †Hadrosauridae |
| Subfamily: | †Saurolophinae |
| Genus: |
†Thespesius Leidy, 1856 |
| Species: | †T. occidentalis |
| Binomial name | |
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Thespesius occidentalis Leidy, 1856 |
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| Synonyms | |
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Thespesius (meaning "wondrous one") is a dubious genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur from the late Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Lance Formation of South Dakota.
In 1855 geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden sent a number of fossils to paleontologist Joseph Leidy in Philadelphia. Hayden had collected them from the surface of a rock formation then known as the Great Lignite Formation (now recognized as part of the Lance Formation) in the Nebraska Territory, near the Grand River (present-day South Dakota). Among them were two caudal vertebrae and a phalanx. In 1856 Leidy named the type species Thespesius occidentalis for these three bones. The generic name is derived from Greek θεσπεσιος, thespesios, "wondrous", because of the colossal size of the remains. Leidy avoided using the suffix "saurus" in the genus name because Vandiveer Hayden had claimed the bones came from a layer from the Miocene so there was a chance that the animal would turn out to be a mammal, though Leidy himself was convinced it was a dinosaurian. The specific name means "western" in Latin.
The caudal vertebrae, USNM 219 and USNM 221, and the middle toe phalanx, USNM 220, form the original syntype series.
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