''Camelotia'' (meaning "from

Camelot Camelot is a legendary castle and Royal court, court associated with King Arthur. Absent in the early Arthurian material, Camelot first appeared in 12th-century French romances and, since the Lancelot-Grail cycle, eventually came to be described ...

") is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

sauropodomorph Sauropodomorpha ( ; from Greek, meaning "lizard-footed forms") is an extinct clade of long-necked, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaurs that includes the sauropods and their ancestral relatives. Sauropods generally grew to very large sizes, had lo ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

from the Late

Triassic The Triassic ( ; sometimes symbolized 🝈) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.5 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.4 Mya. The Triassic is t ...

or Early

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...

in what is now

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. Paleontologists are divided on which family it may belong to; in the past, ''Camelotia'' has generally been assigned to the prosauropods, but this group of primitive dinosaurs is in constant flux. The genus is now considered a member of the family

Melanorosauridae The Melanorosauridae were a family of sauropodomorph dinosaurs which lived during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. The name Melanorosauridae was first coined by Friedrich von Huene in 1929. Huene assigned several families of dinosaurs to the ...

, which includes the first true giant herbivorous dinosaurs.Galton, P. M. (1985). Notes on the Melanorosauridae, a family of large prosauropod dinosaurs (Saurischia: Sauropodomorpha). Geobios, 18(5), 671-676.

Discovery and species

The

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wikt:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to ancho ...

syntype In biological nomenclature, a syntype is any one of two or more biological types that is listed in a description of a taxon where no holotype was designated. Precise definitions of this and related terms for types have been established as part o ...

s SAM 3449 and SAM 3450, were described and named in 1985 by Galton. They were collected from the Triassic-Jurassic

Westbury Formation The Westbury Formation is a geological Formation (geology), formation in England, one of the Penarth Group. It dates back to the Rhaetian.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Late Triassic, Europe)." In: Weishampel, David B. ...

, dating to the latest

Rhaetian The Rhaetian is the latest age (geology), age of the Triassic period (geology), Period (in geochronology) or the uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Triassic system (stratigraphy), System (in chronostratigraphy). It was preceded by the N ...

-Lowermost

Hettangian The Hettangian is the earliest age and lowest stage of the Jurassic Period of the geologic timescale. It spans the time between 201.3 ± 0.2 Ma and 199.3 ± 0.3 Ma (million years ago). The Hettangian follows the Rhaetian (part of the Triass ...

. The fossils includes the specimens "NHMUK PV R2870-R2874", "R2876-R2878" (holotype), with vertebrae, ribs, and parts of the pubis, ischium and hind limb. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

, ''C. borealis'', was first described by Galton in 1985. Dinosaurs formerly known as '' Avalonianus'' and '' Gresslyosaurus'' turned out to be ''Camelotia''.

Description

From the fragmentary remains of ''Camelotia'', part of the skeleton can be reconstructed. ''Camelotia'' likely had a short neck supporting a fairly large skull with small eyes. Its jaws contained many small-to-medium-sized, serrated, leaf-shaped teeth. Its hands and feet had five digits each; the hands in particular were long and narrow, and bore a large claw.Redelstorff, R. A. G. N. A., Sander, P. M., & Galtom, P. M. (2013). Unique bone histology in partial large bone shafts from Aust Cliff (England, Upper Triassic): an early independent experiment in gigantism. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The forelimbs were longer than the hind limbs, in contrast to the more derived sauropods. It has been calculated around long and to have weighed up to .

References

External links

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{{Taxonbar, from=Q29014894 Massopoda Dinosaur genera Rhaetian dinosaurs Hettangian dinosaurs Fossil taxa described in 1985 Taxa named by Peter Galton Dinosaurs of the United Kingdom