Outline: a typical ankylosaur
Vectipelta
"Wight shield"
Type species Vectipelta barretti
- Lived
- 139 to 137 million years ago, Early Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Group
- Ankylosaurs
- Found in
- United Kingdom
- Named by
- Pond et al. 2023
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
140 million years ago
Field notes
About Vectipelta
What it was like
Vectipelta was an armored plant eater, a relative of Polacanthus. It is known from a partial skeleton with many pieces of armor, including spikes.
Its world
It lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now England. Its bones come from the Wessex Formation, where it lived alongside the fish-eating Baryonyx, the predators Neovenator and Eotyrannus and the plant eater Mantellisaurus.
How it was found
Pond and colleagues named it in 2023. The type species is Vectipelta barretti, which honors a paleontologist.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Ankylosauria
Sources: WikidataNamed in: S. Pond, S.-J. Strachan, and T. J. Raven, M. I. Simpson, K. Morgan, S. C. R. Maidment. 2023. Vectipelta barretti, a new ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, UK. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology 21(1):2210577