Vectipelta barretti, a new ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, UK

Abstract

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.

http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:0B19B56E-971D-4316-A92C-FC9AB29BBC38

Keywords:

• Dinosauria
• Ornithischia
• Wealden Group
• Barremian
• osteology
• taxonomy

Acknowledgements

Lin and Dick Spearpoint excavated the specimen with MIS, and Lin Spearpoint carried out an initial preparation and appraisal with MIS. Gary Blackwell and Simon Penn carried out preparation at Dinosaur Isle Museum. The authors thank Martin Munt for inviting us to work on the specimen, Alex Peaker and Simon Penn for collections access and assistance, and Oliver Mattsson (Dinosaur Expeditions) for access to comparative material. The authors would also like to thank Colin Palmer, Pam Gill, Mick Green and Jeremy Lockwood for their involvement in the procurement of the specimen for Dinosaur Isle. Thanks to editors Zerina Johanson and Richard Butler, and reviewers Attila Ősi and Xabier Pereda Suberbiola for their thoughtful and constructive comments that improved the original version of this manuscript.

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1080/14772019.2023.2210577

Associate Editor: Richard Butler