Craterosaurus

bowl lizard

• kratēr · Greek · bowl / mixing vessel
• sauros · Greek · lizard

The name combines the Greek word 'kratēr' (κρατήρ), meaning a large bowl or mixing vessel, with 'sauros' (σαῦρος), meaning lizard. It was chosen because the neural spine of the vertebra (the only known fossil) has a distinctive bowl-shaped or crater-like depression on its surface. This hollow feature on the bone immediately caught the attention of the describer and inspired the name.

Named by

Seeley

Year named

1874

Period

Early Cretaceous

Stages

Hauterivian – Barremian

Found in

Woburn Sands Formation, Bedfordshire, England, UK

Craterosaurus is generally regarded as a nomen dubium. It is known only from a single partial neural spine of a vertebra, which is far too fragmentary to allow confident diagnosis or comparison with other stegosaurs. It has historically been considered a stegosaur, possibly related to Stegosaurus, but the material is insufficient to confirm this or to distinguish it from other taxa. Some earlier workers suggested it might be a junior synonym of Stegosaurus, but this view is not widely accepted due to the paucity of material.