Pronunciation: nor-man-eye-ah-sor-us
Meaning: Normandy lizard
Author/s: Le Loeuff et al. (2013)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Normandy, France
Discovery Chart Position: #832
Normanniasaurus genceyi
The remains of Normanniasaurus were found by Pierre Gencey in blocks of stone that had fallen from the sea cliffs at Bléville on the Northern coast of France. Fortunately, he wasn't standing beneath them at the time, and neither was Eric Buffetaut who mentioned them ever so briefly in his 1995 paper "Dinosaures de France". The bones then disappeared until 2013 when Jean Le Loeuff discovered them in the Muséum d' Histoire Naturelle du Havre, nearly seven decades after its original fossil collection was blown to kingdom come by Allied bombing raids on 5th September 1944.
(Gencey's Normandy lizard)Etymology
Normanniasaurus is derived from "Normannia" (the Latin name of
Normandy, the region where the bones were discovered) and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).The species epithet, genceyi, honors the discoverer Mr. Pierre Gencey.
Discovery
The remains of Normanniasaurus were discovered in the Poudingue Ferrugineux Formation at Bléville, Le Havre (Seine-Maritime), France, by Pierre Gencey in 1990.The holotype (MHNH-2013.2.1.1 to MHNH-2013.2.1.12) is a partial skeleton including vertebrae from the hip and tail, a right shoulder blade, parts of both ilia and ischia (hip bones), the end of a femur (thigh) and a partial fibula (calfbone).
