Meet Vectipelta barretti, new armoured dinosaur from the Isle of Wight

[ceratopsian]

A new armoured dinosaur from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, UK.

Here's the NHM release - it's named after their Prof. Paul Barrett, who specialises in herbivores

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/june/new-species-of-dinosaur-named-after-museum-scientist-paul-barrett.html?fbclid=IwAR0WWuAyOrq2ML4S-SWX3hXwwp0Ewe_uUqUNrDnIkdSUcgIKXTHCnucTrU

And here's the abstract from the(paywalled) article:

"The Wealden Group of southern England was deposited by rivers, on floodplains and in lagoons during the Early Cretaceous. Two historically significant ankylosaurs, Polacanthus and Hylaeosaurus, are currently known from its deposits; Hylaeosaurus from the 'lower Wealden fauna' and Polacanthus from the 'upper Wealden fauna'. Here, we describe a new genus and species of ankylosaur from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, which is characterized by numerous postcranial autapomorphies. Vectipelta barretti gen. et sp. nov. is 6–8 million years older than Polacanthus, and at least 3 million years younger than Hylaeosaurus, suggesting a more complicated pattern of faunal turnover in the Wealden Group than previously realized. Vectipelta does not appear to be closely related to either of the other Wealden taxa, but instead is found in a clade with two Chinese ankylosaurs, suggesting a complex pattern of dispersal to and from Europe, North America and Asia during the Early Cretaceous. The historic practise of cataloguing all ankylosaur material from the Wessex Formation as 'Polacanthus' has potentially prevented a diversity of taxa from being discovered, and new and existing material in museum collections should be re-appraised using an autapomorphy-driven approach."

[Paleo Flo]

A cool guy from the UK :-)

[Crackington]

New one for Collecta to produce....

[ceratopsian]

Pretty fragmentary but that has never hampered CollectA's enthusiasm!

New one for Collecta to produce....

[Crackington]

Yes, maybe they will find more specimens from re-examing Polacanthus fossils in museum collections.

Just hope it doesn't endanger Polacanthus itself though, it's one of my faves.

[VD231991]

Yes, maybe they will find more specimens from re-examing Polacanthus fossils in museum collections.

Just hope it doesn't endanger Polacanthus itself though, it's one of my faves.

Blows and Honeysett (2014) referred one specimen from the Wadhurst Clay Formation (Valanginian) of Ashdown Quarry in Bexhill, East Sussex to Polacanthus sp., but Raven et al. (2020) disputed that referral on the grounds that it doesn't share any characters with Polacanthus. The description of Vectipelta reminds me of the situation where one styracosternan specimen was originally referred to Mantellisaurus but was eventually described as its own taxon, Brighstoneus. What is striking about the cladistic analysis of Vectipelta is that it is recovered as closer to Ankylosauridae than to members of Polacanthidae, and that the Late Cretaceous form Niobrarasaurus is placed within Polacanthidae, because Niobrarasaurus is way younger than Hylaeosaurus or Polacanthus, and Dongyangopelta and Zhejiangosaurus are younger than Vectipelta. 

Blows, W. T., and K. Honeysett. 2014. First Valanginian Polacanthus foxii (Dinosauria, Ankylosauria) from England, from the Lower Cretaceous of Bexhill, Sussex. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 125:233–251.

Raven, T. J., Barrett, P. M., Pond, S. B., and Maidment, S. C. R., 2020. Osteology and taxonomy of British Wealden Supergroup (Berriasian–Aptian) ankylosaurs (Ornithischia, Ankylosauria). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 40: e1826956. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2020.1826956

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for posting!

I was able to get the pdf of the description; if anyone wants it just pm me your email address.