Becklespinax
| Becklespinax | ||||||||||
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Vertebrae of becklespinax |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous | ||||||||||
| 136.4 to 112 million years | ||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Becklespinax | ||||||||||
| Olshevsky , 1991 | ||||||||||
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Becklespinax is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous England. In 1991, George Olshevsky published the first scientific description of the genus with the type species B. altispinax .
This carnivore is known only from a few vertebrae and teeth , which were found in Sussex in southern England in 1884 and were originally assigned to Altispinax , now a noun dubium . Becklespinax is characterized by the appendages on the animal's back, which most likely once supported a back sail . It is not clear whether the 5 to 8 meter long theropod is closely related to the spinosaurids Spinosaurus from Africa or Baryonyx , also from the English Lower Cretaceous, or whether it belongs to another taxon .
Research history
Friedrich von Huene established the genus Altispinax with the species A. dunkeri in 1923 . It was based on the description of Megalosaurus dunkeri that Dames had published in 1884 based on a tooth and some vertebrae. The vertebrae had been found and described in England that same year by the collector Samuel H. Beckles. It was later discovered that they belonged neither to Altispinax nor to any other known genus, so George Olshevsky established the new genus named after the fossil collector in 1991.