Abstract
DURING the past summer, a party from the American Museum of Natural History, under the leadership of Mr. Barnum Brown, has explored the Cretaceous rocks of Montana in which remains of fossil reptiles occur. According to a message from the New York correspondent of the Times which appears in the issue of Oct. 1, it has found a nearly complete skeleton of the armadillo-shaped dinosaur Nodosaurus, which has hitherto been known only from fragments. The reptile is remarkably broad, for although it is only 14 ft. long, it is 7 ft. wide at the hips. It is heavily armoured with bony plates, which are arranged to give flexibility to the trunk and tail. It has feeble teeth adapted for feeding on either vegetables or insects. Nodosaurus was first recognised and named in 1889 by the late Prof. O. C. Marsh, who received characteristic pieces of it from his collectors in the Cretaceous rocks of Wyoming. A somewhat similar fossil skeleton, without head, was discovered in 1913 by the late Mr. W. E. Cutler in corresponding deposits in Alberta, Canada, and it is now exhibited in the British Museum (Natural History). It was named Scolosaurus cutleri by Baron Nopcsa, who published a restored drawing of it by Miss Alice B. Woodward in the Illustrated London News of Sept. 11, 1926. Scolosaurus must have been about 12 ft. long, and would be only about 3 ft. high when walking. A smaller reptile of the same group was found long ago by the late Rev. William Fox in the Wealden formation in the cliffs on the south coast of the Isle of Wight, but he was able to recover it only in a rather fragmentary state. It was named Polacanthus foxi by Hulke, and is now also exhibited in the British Museum (Natural History).
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A Dinosaur from Montana. Nature 130, 574 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130574a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130574a0