By John D’Angelo on @fezraptor
Name Meaning: Bird likeness
Classification:Â Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Plateosauria, Massopoda, Sauropodiformes, Anchisauria, Sauropoda, Gravisauria, Eusauropoda, Neosauropoda, Macronaria, Titanosauriformes
You know how sauropod have been pretty much exclusively terrible? Well this one is no exception! The original fossil was two vertebrae, and Seeley thought that the animal bridged the gap between pterosaurs, birds, and dinosaurs, based on the vertebrae. Really, he wasn’t wrong, but you know who thought he was? Richard Owen, our problematic fave, who named Dinosauria and refused to think that birds were dinosaurs. Wanker. He split the vertebra into two genera, Iguanodon and Bothriospondylus, ignoring the priority of the name. As time went on, more and more species of Ornithopsis were named, and honestly it was such a chaotic mess that I don’t... I don’t even... Nope. The badly eroded type specimen is pretty much the only one we’re certain belongs to Ornithopsis, and it had very pneumatised vertebrae with large cavities (like birds), and it was similar enough to other members of this group to be called a titanosauriform. It was found in East Sussex and in the Wessex Formation in England, from the Barremian age of the Early Cretaceous, sometime between 125 and 129 million years ago, and is another great example of how 1800s paleontology was ridiculous and terrible.Â
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Cretaceous
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopsis
Shout out goes to ginyilove!