[D] Thescelosaurus neglectus [Su] [sG] [T]
Describer
Gilmore, 1913
Time
Cretaceous Late Campanian Maastrichtian
Classification
Ornithischia Ornithopoda Hypsilophodontidae
Diet
Herbivore
Fossilsite
Lance Formation, Wyoming, Judith River Formation (Wedge), Hell Creek Formation, Montana; Hell Creek Formation, South Dakota; Laramie Formation, Colorado, US; Scollard Formation, Alberta, Frenchman Formation, Saskatchewan, Canada
Length
3.4 meter
Info
Genus - Typespecies - Skull
Thescelosaurus neglectus (Gilmore, 1913) > Thescelosaurus edmontonius (Sternberg, 1940)
Approximately 8 partial skeletons, cranial and postcranial elements, teeth.
Holotype
USNM 7757collected by J.B. Hatcher and Utterback in 1891 named by Gilmore in the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, volume 61, pages 1-5, in 1913.
The type material from the Lance Formation consists of a partial postcranial skeleton. The name means \\\\\\\"beautiful but neglected lizard\\\\\\\" because it was not named until many years after it was found.
Long regarded as a hypsilophodontid (Gilmore, 1915; Sternberg, 1937, 1940; Morris, 1976), was referred to the Iguanodontia by Galton, 1974 because the tibia is shorter than the femur in this genus.
It differs from other hypsilophodontid ornithopods in the robustness of its skeleton (convergent on Tenontosaurus) but does resembles them in derived features such as the rodlike prebubic process.
Furthermore, there are no synapomorphies supporting reference to the clade Iguanodontia.