Ischyrosaurus


"Ischyrosaurus" was a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Kimmeridgian-age Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay of Dorset, England. It was once synonymized with the Early Cretaceous-age Pelorosaurus.

History and Taxonomy

"Ischyrosaurus" is based on a partial humerus 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.
Like 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, 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.