Huxleysaurus

Huxley's lizard

• Huxley · English (proper name) · honouring Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), English biologist and palaeontologist
• saurus · Greek · lizard

Huxleysaurus is named in honour of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), the renowned English biologist and palaeontologist who was one of Charles Darwin's most prominent supporters and was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog." Huxley made important early contributions to the study of dinosaurs and was among the first scientists to argue for a close evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds. The suffix -saurus comes from the Greek word for "lizard," a standard element in dinosaur genus names.

Named by

Paul, Sanz, Pereda-Suberbiola, and Galobart

Year named

2012

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stages

Campanian – Maastrichtian

Found in

Tremp Group, Lleida Province, Catalonia, Spain

Huxleysaurus is a medium-to-large styracosternian ornithopod (iguanodontian) dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Spain. It was formerly referred to as a species of Rhabdodon or a related form, and its naming helped clarify the diversity of European iguanodontians near the end of the Cretaceous. It should not be confused with the British genus Hypsilophodon, which Huxley himself originally described.