MEANING: Isle of Wight shield
PERIOD: Early Cretaceous
CONTINENT: Europe
Vectipelta is an ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Wessex Formation of England. The name is derived from "Vectis", the Roman name for the Isle of Wight. Like other ankylosaurs, it was a large herbivore with short legs and a wide, flat body, covered in osteoderms and spikes. Although it was discovered in England, Vectipelta was not very closely related to other ankylosaurs in the same area. It was actually most closely related to Chinese ankylosaurs, suggesting dinosaurs moved freely from Asia to Europe in the Early Cretaceous.
Abstract from paper: The Wealden Group of southern England was deposited by rivers, on floodplains and in lagoons during the Early Cretaceous. Two historically significant ankylosaurs, Polacanthus and Hylaeosaurus, are currently known from its deposits; Hylaeosaurus from the ‘lower Wealden fauna’ and Polacanthus from the ‘upper Wealden fauna’. Here, we describe a new genus and species of ankylosaur from the Wessex Formation of the Isle of Wight, which is characterized by numerous postcranial autapomorphies. Vectipelta barretti gen. et sp. nov. is 6–8 million years older than Polacanthus, and at least 3 million years younger than Hylaeosaurus, suggesting a more complicated pattern of faunal turnover in the Wealden Group than previously realized. Vectipelta does not appear to be closely related to either of the other Wealden taxa, but instead is found in a clade with two Chinese ankylosaurs, suggesting a complex pattern of dispersal to and from Europe, North America and Asia during the Early Cretaceous. The historic practise of cataloguing all ankylosaur material from the Wessex Formation as ‘Polacanthus’ has potentially prevented a diversity of taxa from being discovered, and new and existing material in museum collections should be re-appraised using an autapomorphy-driven approach.
Vectipelta is from the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago. It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin creta, "chalk", which is abundant in the latter half of the period.
The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct flora and fauna, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. The world was ice free, and forests extended to the poles. During this time, new groups of mammals and birds appeared. During the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants appeared and began to rapidly diversify, becoming the dominant group of plants across the Earth by the end of the Cretaceous, coincident with the decline and extinction of previously widespread gymnosperm groups.
The Cretaceous (along with the Mesozoic) ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a large mass extinction in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and large marine reptiles, died out. The end of the Cretaceous is defined by the abrupt Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), a geologic signature associated with the mass extinction that lies between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras.
Vectipelta is an ankylosaur. Ankylosauria is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs, most of which have armor in the form of bony osteoderms covering their bodies. They were bulky quadrupeds, with short, powerful limbs. Ankylosaurs first appeared in the Middle Jurassic, and persisted until the end of the Cretaceous Period. They are primarily known from the Northern Hemisphere, but some basal members are known from southern Gondwana during the Cretaceous.
Along with the stegosaurs, ankylosaurs are part of the group Thyreophora, known for their various combinations of armor and spikes. The two main families of ankylosaurs are Ankylosauridae, which are known for having large clubs on the ends of their tails, and Nodosauridae, which do not.