page_title: Cetiosauriscus
section_title: Discovery and naming
hierarchical_section_title: Cetiosauriscus / History of discovery / Discovery and naming
caption_attribution_description: English: Cetiosauriscus composite skeletal, based on close relatives (such as basal Mammenchisaurs, Cetiosaurs etc.)
context_page_description: Cetiosauriscus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived between 166 and 164 million years ago during the Callovian in what is now England. A herbivore, Cetiosauriscus had—for sauropod standards—a moderately long tail, and longer forelimbs, making them as long as its hindlimbs. It has been estimated as about 15 m long and between 4 and 10 t in weight.
  The only known fossil that was later named Cetiosauriscus includes most of the rear half of a skeleton as well as a hindlimb. Found in Cambridgeshire in the 1890s, it was described by Arthur Smith Woodward in 1905 as a new specimen of the species Cetiosaurus leedsi. This was changed in 1927, when Friedrich von Huene found NHMUK R3078 and the C. leedsi type specimen to be too different from Cetiosaurus, warranting its own genus, which he named Cetiosauriscus, meaning "Cetiosaurus-like". Cetiosauriscus leedsi was referred to the sauropod family Diplodocidae because of similarities in the tail and foot, and had the dubious or intermediate species "Cetiosauriscus" greppini, "C." longus, and "C." glymptonensis assigned to it.
context_section_description: The sauropod fossil today known as Cetiosauriscus stewarti was discovered in May 1898 by clay workers in the area around Fletton to the south of Peterborough and east of the Great Northern Railway. Pits in this region expose the fossil-rich sedimentary rocks of the marine Oxford Clay, which is of middle Callovian age and today regarded as one of the classic geological formations of British palaeontology. The sauropod fossil possibly stems from NPBCL pit No. 1, which was the northernmost pit operated by the New Peterborough Brick Company Limited, and which produced the most vertebrate fossils. The discovery was brought to the attention of Leeds, who, after excavation, took the sauropod specimen to Eyebury, the Leeds' family home. In mid-August, after some cleaning and repairing of the specimen, geologist Henry Woodward visited Eyebury and produced a life-sized drawing of the remains for presentation at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting. Following this presentation, on 17 August 1898, Henry Woodward returned with American palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, who considered the sauropod to be closely related to the North American taxon Diplodocus. Alfred Leeds offered the sauropod to the British Museum of Natural History (BMNH, now abbreviated as NHMUK) for £250, which would equate to about £30,529 in 2017. The NHMUK had earlier in 1890 and 1892 bought the First and Second Collections of Alfred Leeds, respectively. Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the NHMUK, had "great pleasure" to recommend to the Trustees of the NHMUK the fossil be purchased. The purchase was sanctioned on 25 February 1899, along with the purchase of assorted other remains for just over £357 (~£43,596 now), where the Leeds sauropod gained the accession number BMNH R3078 (now NHMUK R3078).
  The amount of material made NHMUK R3078 the most complete sauropod specimen from the United Kingdom, only comparable later to the "Rutland Dinosaur" (referred to Cetiosaurus) discovered in 1967. Known regions of the specimen include the forelimb, hindlimb and vertebral column. The forelimb lacks the manus (hand) and part of the radius and ulna, although the hindlimb lacks only a few bones in the pes (foot) and fragments of the tibia, fibula and ilium. The vertebrae known are four parts of dorsal vertebrae, the neural spines of the sacrum, multiple anterior caudal vertebrae (tail bones), and a series of 27 nearly complete vertebrae from the middle of the tail with associated or articulated chevrons (ribs along the underside of the tail), although the vertebral series is not continuous. A tail tip (NHMUK R1967) from the same locality, but a different individual was thought by palaeontologist Alan Charig in 1980 to belong to Cetiosauriscus. The assignment of NHMUK R1967 to Cetiosauriscus was considered unlikely in alternate studies by palaeontologists Friedrich von Huene, Paul Upchurch and Darren Naish because of the lack of overlap and uncertain phylogenetic positions. In 1903, the skeleton was mounted as preserved in the British Museum, so it could be more easily compared with other mounted sauropods from North America. The mount of Cetiosauriscus was put on display just prior to the cast skeleton of Diplodocus, and was displayed with the dorsal vertebrae NHMUK R1984 and some isolated teeth from a camarasaurid (possibly referable to Cetiosauriscus), making it the first sauropod skeleton mounted in the United Kingdom.
  NHMUK R3078 was referred in 1905 by Arthur Woodward to the species Cetiosaurus leedsi, as it was from the same geologic formation as other specimens that were assigned to C. leedsii. Woodward also referred the dorsal vertebrae NHMUK R1984 and the tail tip NHMUK R1967 to the species. In 1927, Huene briefly described the anatomy of the species C. leedsii, where he noted that it shared many similarities with Haplocanthosaurus and was most likely between Cetiosaurus proper and the former genus. For this reason, Huene proposed the new genus name Cetiosauriscus for the species. To the genus he referred the specimens NHMUK R1984–R1988 an
caption: Known elements of Cetiosauriscus
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