Harry Govier Seeley named this genus in 1879 for a disarticulated partial
postcranial skeleton that had been uncovered no later than 1878 at
Reach, Cambridgeshire, composed of a left
dentary fragment, numerous
vertebrae from the
neck,
back, and
sacrum, parts of the
pectoral girdle,
humerus fragments, part of the left
femur, left
tibia,
foot bones, ribs, and other fragments. He regarded it as possibly
juvenile, due to its small size, with a length of about five feet. The
type species is
Anoplosaurus curtonotus. The generic name, derived from the Greek
hoplo~, a word element used in combinations, with the meaning of "armed", refers to the fact no armour plates had been discovered. The
specific name is derived from
Latin curtus, "short", and Greek νῶτον,
noton, "back". A second species,
Anoplosaurus major, "the larger one", was named by Seeley in 1879 for a neck vertebra and three partial
caudal vertebrae he removed from the material previously referred to
Acanthopholis stereocercus, from the same formation as the
type species. Although Seeley assigned
Anoplosaurus to a general
Dinosauria, he understood its possible affinities with
Scelidosaurus or
Polacanthus, as shown by the genus name, and other workers began to see it as an
armored dinosaur. In 1902, Baron
Franz Nopcsa referred both species to
Acanthopholis, creating a
Acanthopholis curtonotus and a
Acanthopholis major. In 1923 Nopcsa suggested that, while some of the remains belonged to
Acanthopholis, other remains, which he removed from that genus, belonged to a
camptosaurid. This suggestion led to considerable confusion, with some authors beginning to classify
Anoplosaurus under the
Camptosauridae, a practice that was continued over several decades (with modifications as iguanodontian taxonomy changed over the years). In 1964,
Oskar Kuhn renamed
Syngonosaurus macrocercus Seeley 1879 into
Anoplosaurus macrocercus. In 1969,
Rodney Steel renamed
Eucercosaurus tanyspondylus Seeley 1879 into
Anoplosaurus tanyspondylus. Both
Syngonosaurus and
Eucercosaurus are today seen as
nomina dubia and these last two
Anoplosaurus species are hereby equally invalid. Reviews since then have followed this interpretation of the genus as an armored dinosaur belonging to the Ankylosauria. ==Palaeobiology==