Camptosaurus

As the sacral vertebrae were unfused, the name meant “Prestwich’s flexible lizard” — Greek kamptos meaning flexible and saurus meaning lizard.

The Cumnor Dinosaur

The Camptosaurus prestwichii at Cumnor Hurst was discovered in 1879 by workmen in a brickpit on Cumnor Hurst, 2&½ miles southwest of Oxford. The corpse of the animal had floated out to sea, sunk and become fossilized in the 153 myo Kimmeridge Clay. The bones were dug out and cast aside, until a workmen took a bag of them to George Rolleston. Recognizing their importance, Rolleston secured them for Oxford’s Geology Department. The Oxford specimen is the most complete member of the genus known from Europe, and is the earliest known representative of large-bodied quadrupedal (sometimes bipedal) herbivorous dinosaurs later represented by the iguanodontids.