A Dorset dinosaur
Every good skeleton has come from the cliffs near Charmouth, on the Jurassic Coast.
Jurassic Europe · Plated and armoured dinosaurs
Scelidosaurus
Limb lizard · skel-EYE-doh-SORE-us
A low, four-legged plant-eater covered in rows of bony studs.
- Size
- About 4m long; 270kg
- Lived
- About 196 to 183 million years ago
- Found in
- Dorset, England
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To scale
How big was it?
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Good to know
Six things about the scelidosaurus
The first complete dinosaur
A skeleton found in 1858 was the first complete dinosaur ever discovered.
Armoured all over
Hundreds of bony studs grew in its skin, in rows from neck to tail.
An early cousin
It is an early relative of both Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus.
Washed out to sea
It lived on land, but its body floated out to sea and sank into the mud, which is why it is so well preserved.
Even its skin
Some fossils show the pattern of its scaly skin.
The real thing
Photos of the scelidosaurus
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Low ferns and other soft plants, cropped with a small beak.
How we know
The best skeleton was found by fossil collectors on the Dorset coast in 2000, and took years to free from the rock.
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