Home of Scelidosaurus, no trip to the Jurassic Coast would be complete without meeting “the Charmouth Dinosaur”.
The restored cast on display in the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre is based on the most recent Scelidosaurus skeleton to have been discovered. This specimen is over 85% complete and has even been exceptionally preserved with patches of skin and apparent stomach contents making it Britain’s most complete and best-preserved dinosaur found to date! So far Scelidosaurus has only ever been found around Charmouth, nowhere else in the world so far. Only 8 skeletons of this dinosaur have been discovered.
The first parts of this specimen were found in December, 2000 by local collector David Sole. Over the course of the next few months into years more pieces were revealed and collected by David and fellow collectors Peter Langham, Jo Anderson, Andrew Sole, Christine Endecott, Rick Taylor and Bernie Abbott. The last known piece found was discovered 11 years after David’s initial discovery. This specimen is currently on loan from to Bristol Museum where it is being studied and displayed.
It is thanks to David Costin’s incredible preparatory work that this one of a kind specimen has been revealed in such immaculate detail.
What was Scelidosaurus?
Scelidosaurus was a herbivorous dinosaur that lived approximately 193 million years ago, from the Early Jurassic. We know that Scelidosaurus was a herbivore from anatomical details like the shape of the teeth, adapted for shearing through plant matter rather than the dagger-like teeth of carnivorous dinosaurs. Analysis of the potential stomach contents could shed more light on what these creatures were eating.
Its most notable feature, perhaps, is the prominent armour plating covering its body. Scelidosaurus is covered from head to tail in these plates, or scutes, providing the creature with defence from predators.
Armour like the scelidosaur’s is a trait found across the group of dinosaurs called the thyreophorans, the most famous members of which are Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus. Extensive research by palaeontologist David Norman, looking at the characteristics of this group, places Scelidosaurus as a basal or ‘primitive’ thyreophoran. Analysis suggests it is more closely related to ankylosaurs than it is to stegosaurs.
Male or female?
One of the unique things about David’s scelidosaur are the horns preserved on the back of the skull. Horns like this weren’t present in previous specimens, where the skulls are preserved. The most likely cause for this is that scelidosaurs were sexually dimorphic, meaning there were physical differences between males and females. The horns present on this scelidosaur suggest that this may be a male, similar to modern sheep and deer.
How did it die?
Like almost all dinosaurs, Scelidosaurus was a terrestrial creature, living on land. During the Early Jurassic much of the UK was submerged in a shallow, tropical sea as what would become the Atlantic Ocean was beginning to form. There were, however, nearby islands on which dinosaurs lived, including Scelidosaurus.
The majority of Scelidosaurus specimens are known to have come from a single layer of the cliffs. This suggests that it was a single event that deposited these animals on the sea floor at the same time. The most likely cause of this would be a flood or a tsunami hitting one of the nearby islands and sweeping a herd out to sea.
Evidence in David Sole’s specimen shows that drowning was the most likely cause of death. Analysis of some of the preserved material shows some potential stomach contents present in its throat. Vomiting is very often an automatic response to drowning and provides a more visceral glimpse into this animal’s last moments and its unfortunate fate.
