Long neglected after landmark discovery, armored dinosaur finally gets its due

A life reconstruction of the Jurassic Period dinosaur Scelidosaurus, which lived roughly 193 million years ago, is seen in this artist's rendition released by the University of Cambridge August 27, 2020. John Sibbick/Handout via REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the bones of the early armored dinosaur Scelidosaurus were unearthed in 1858 in west Dorset, England, they comprised the first complete dinosaur skeleton ever identified.

But aside from cursory papers by pioneering British paleontologist Richard Owen in 1861 and 1863 that incompletely described its anatomy, Scelidosaurus was long neglected despite the landmark nature of its discovery.