Hypsilophodon

Hypsilophodon was a small, agile dinosaur that lived in prehistoric England.

Scientists used to think Hypsilophodon spent a lot of time in trees. This came from a misunderstanding of the dinosaur’s toe bones.

We now know Hypsilophodon lived on the ground and was good at running.

Several Hypsilophodon individuals were discovered together at one fossil site, suggesting they lived and died together. Some experts say this dinosaur probably lived in groups, like deer.

All the known Hypsilophodon fossils come from the Isle of Wight, UK.

Today, the island is well known as a fossil hotspot. Lots of prehistoric animals have been found there, including many other dinosaurs, crocodiles, mammals and flying reptiles called pterosaurs.

In the Early Cretaceous Period, the Isle of Wight had a warm and humid environment with a lot of rivers and swamps. This made it an ideal place for fossils to form.

Watch our video about the Isle of Wight, dinosaur island.

Hypsilophodon was quite small, so it would’ve mostly eaten plants that grew low to the ground.

It used its sharp beak to clip vegetation, and experts think it probably had cheeks to help it chew its food.

Hypsilophodon had five-fingered hands, which they used to grasp branches and other food items.

The meaning of Hypsilophodon is a little confusing.

The exact translation is ‘high-crested tooth’, but this dinosaur didn’t have crested teeth.

Renowned English scientist Thomas Henry Huxley created the name in 1869. At the time, dinosaur naming conventions weren’t yet established

Huxley was inspired by another dinosaur name – Iguanodon, which means ‘iguana tooth’.

He wanted his new dinosaur name to be similar in style. So, he took the old Latin name for the iguana – Hypsilophus, meaning ‘high crest’ – and added the Greek ‘-odon’, meaning ‘tooth’, to create the name Hypsilophodon.

So in a way, both Iguanodon and Hypsilophodon mean ‘iguana tooth’.

Hypsilophodon belongs to the ornithischian dinosaur group, otherwise known as the ‘bird-hipped’ dinosaurs.

Despite the name, these dinosaurs had no direct relation to modern birds, which evolved from saurischian or ‘lizard-hipped’ dinosaurs.

There isn’t much evidence of ornithischian dinosaurs having feathers. A few have been shown to have primitive feather-like structures on their bodies, such as Psittacosaurus. But these seem to be exceptions. Almost all other ornithischians show no feather-like coverings at all.

As far as scientists can currently tell from available fossils, most of the bird-hipped dinosaurs didn’t have feathers, and there’s no evidence that Hypsilophodon had them.

In July 2024, we added a bronze cast of a Hypsilophodon skeleton to our new gardens. It’s the most accurate Hypsilophodon reconstruction ever created. Cutting-edge research by our scientists allowed us to work out what the skull looked like to a new level of detail.

Visit our gardens.