The holotype was discovered in 1897. Also in 1897, French
paleontologist Henri-Émile Sauvage referred a tail vertebra from the
Tithonian Mont-Lambert Formation of France, catalogued in the collection of the
Musée Géologique du Boulonnais at
Boulogne-sur-Mer in
France, to
Iguanodon prestwichii (now
Cumnoria prestwichii), a herbivorous
iguanodont. In 1928 Baron
Franz Nopcsa recognised the fossil to be the vertebra of a theropod not an ornithopod. He decided to name it as the genus
Teinurosaurus. However, by a mistake of the printer, the
footnote in which the new name was mentioned was not placed at the end of the section referring to the fossil but adjacent to a citation of
Saurornithoides Osborn 1924, giving the false impression Nopcsa intended to rename the latter genus. After having discovered the typographical error, Nopcsa in 1929 added an
addendum to the article, correcting the mistake. In 1932 German paleontologist
Friedrich von Huene again named the fossil, giving it the
species name Caudocoelus sauvagei. "Caudocoelus" means "hollow tail" in
Latin. The
specific epithet honours Sauvage. The name
Teinurosaurus was largely forgotten or not even understood to be a synonym of
Caudocoelus, until in 1969
John Ostrom revealed its priority. Ostrom also pointed out that Nopcsa had not provided a specific name. In 1978 George Olshevsky was the first to combine the two names, making
Teinurosaurus sauvagei (von Huene 1932) Olshevsky 1978 vide Nopcsa 1928 emend. 1929 a valid species name. The holotype (originally catalogued
MGB 500 now
BHN2R 240) is a distal caudal vertebra, 152 millimetres long. A number of authors (e.g. Lapparent 1967; Galton 1982) believed that the holotype was destroyed in World War II, but the specimen is still extant, as noted by Buffetaut et al. (1991).
Teinurosaurus was considered by von Huene to be a member
Coeluridae, but is now generally seen as a
nomen dubium at
Averostra incertae sedis. ==References==