Alcovasaurus
genus of Jurassic stegosaurids
Alcovasaurus is an extinct genus of herbivorous stegosaurian dinosaurs that lived in the Late Jurassic. It was found in the Morrison Formation of Wyoming, United States. The genus contains a single species, Alcovasaurus longispinus, originally assigned to the genus Stegosaurus. It is likely a member of the Dacentrurinae, and has been referred to the genus Miragaia by some authors.
Discovery and naming
In July 1908, Professors William Harlow Reed and A.C. Dart of the University of Wyoming, in the Alcova Quarry in Natrona County, Wyoming, uncovered the skeleton of a stegosaurian. This would be the last major excavation of a dinosaur in which Reed was personally involved. In 1914, the find was named and described as Stegosaurus longispinus by Charles Whitney Gilmore on the basis of holotype UW 20503 (originally UW D54), a partial postcranial skeleton of an adult individual consisting of forty-two vertebrae, a fragmentary sacrum, two ischia, a portion of one pubis, the right femur, several ribs and four dermal tail spines. The specific name is derived from Latin longus, "long", and spina, "spine", in reference to the long tail spines. Due to the presence of very long tail spines, S. longispinus was treated as valid by subsequent authors. In 1993, S. longispinus was by George Olshevsky and Tracy Lee Ford seen as a possible North American species of the African genus Kentrosaurus as a ?Kentrosaurus longispinus.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alcovasaurus” as genus of Jurassic stegosaurids. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as genus of Jurassic stegosaurids. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18684887. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1914 and 1993.
Scientific names, classifications and consensus can change while older terminology persists in catalogues and historical literature. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alcovasaurus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.