Thespesius

wondrous lizard / divinely speaking lizard

• thespesios · Greek · wondrous, divinely uttered, superhuman
• -us · Latin · masculine Latin suffix

The name comes from the ancient Greek word 'thespesios' (θεσπέσιος), meaning 'wondrous,' 'divinely uttered,' or 'superhuman,' and was applied to this animal to evoke its enormous, almost supernatural size. Joseph Leidy named it in 1856, making it one of the earliest named North American hadrosaurs. The name was intended to convey awe at the scale of the creature's remains.

Named by

Leidy

Year named

1856

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stages

Campanian – Maastrichtian

Found in

Lance Formation, South Dakota, USA

Thespesius is generally regarded as a nomen dubium. It was originally described from very fragmentary material (vertebrae and other elements) that cannot be confidently assigned to any specific hadrosaur genus. Various species have at times been referred to Thespesius, but most have since been reassigned to better-known genera such as Edmontosaurus or Anatotitan. Because the type material is too incomplete to diagnose reliably, the name is considered a nomen dubium by most modern authorities.