53-450: Polacanthus , deriving its name from the Ancient Greek polys-/πολύς- "many" and akantha/ἄκανθα "thorn" or "prickle", is an early armoured, spiked, plant-eating ankylosaurian dinosaur from the early Cretaceous period of England . In the genus Polacanthus several species have been named but only the type species Polacanthus foxii is today seen as valid. Polacanthus was
106-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
159-458: A quadrupedal ornithischian or "bird-hipped" dinosaur. It lived 130 to 125 million years ago in what is now western Europe . Polacanthus foxii was named after a find on the Isle of Wight in 1865. There are not many fossil remains of this creature, and some important anatomical features, such as its skull, are poorly known. Early depictions often gave it a very generic head as it was only known from
212-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
265-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
318-481: A number of syntypes : BMNH 2584, a left scapula found at Bolney which in 1841 by Gideon Mantell had been referred to Hylaeosaurus ; and BMNH R1106 en 1107, a tibia and humerus. The new taxon has proven to be very problematic. Contrary to what Nopcsa assumed the tibia and humerus were not found at Bolney but on Wight. This makes Polacanthoides a possible chimera , especially since their provenance from Wight makes it likely they belonged to Polacanthus . Furthermore,
371-493: A picture of the footprint is inside the dinosaur farm. Polacanthus foxii was discovered by the Reverend William Fox on the Isle of Wight in early 1865, at Barnes High at the southwest coast. Fox at first planned to have his friend Alfred Tennyson name the new dinosaur during a meeting on 23 July 1865, when the remains were shown to paleontologist Richard Owen . Tennyson proposed Euacanthus Vectianus but this name
424-543: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
477-530: A right femur length of 555 millimetres with the holotype. In 2011 Barrett e.a. indicated two possible unique traits, autapomorphies : the floor of the neural canal is deeply cut by a groove with a V-shaped transverse profile; the caudal spikes have triangular bases in side view and narrow points. In 2020, a study concluded to a single autapomorphy: the ischia at half length curve towards each other, their rear ends touching at their inner sides. The subsequent describers have always dedicated much effort at restoring
530-671: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in a wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
583-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
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#1732858842206636-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
689-426: Is 108 centimetres wide and 90 centimetres long. It features four horizontal rows of larger keeled osteoderms per side, surrounded by smaller ossicles. These latter are sometimes completely fused to form flat armour plates. Hulke thought that on the tail there were two rows of keeled osteoderms per side. Of a set of spikes found with the fossil, he assumed they had adorned the sides of the rump. A different arrangement
742-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
795-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
848-611: Is also in the London Natural History Museum as specimen NHMUK R9293. It is the first specimen to show skull elements, neck vertebrae and unequivocal anterior armour. More contentious are finds from mainland England. In 2014 a partial skeleton was reported from Bexhill in Sussex, specimen BEXHM 1999.34.1-2011.23.1 discovered in the early summer of 1998 by David Brockhurst in the Ashdown Pevensey Quarry. This dates from
901-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
954-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
1007-912: Is that there existed a clade Polacanthidae below the Nodosauridae + Ankylosauridae node. A more conventional analysis from 2012, in which Polacanthus foxii and P. rudgwickensis were not recovered as sister species , is shown by this cladogram: Antarctopelta Mymoorapelta Hylaeosaurus Anoplosaurus Tatankacephalus Polacanthus rudgwickensis (= Horshamosaurus ) Gargoyleosaurus Hoplitosaurus Gastonia Peloroplites Polacanthus Struthiosaurus Zhejiangosaurus Hungarosaurus Animantarx Niobrarasaurus Nodosaurus Pawpawsaurus Sauropelta Silvisaurus Stegopelta Texasetes Edmontonia Panoplosaurus Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
1060-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
1113-526: The Valanginian . In 1999, 2007 and 2011, remains from Spain were referred to Polacanthus . A 2020 review of British ankylosaurian fossils concluded that none of these additional specimens could be confidently referred to Polacanthus , which would therefore be represented only by the holotype. Polacanthus is known definitively only from its holotype specimen, representing the species P. foxii . However, numerous other species have been erroneously assigned to
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#17328588422061166-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
1219-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
1272-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
1325-765: The Lower Wessex Formation. Blows in 1987 tentatively referred it to Polacanthus . Fox in 1865 assigned Polacanthus to the Dinosauria, Huxley in 1870 and Hulke in 1881 assigned it to the Scelidosauridae . Its exact affinities were not well understood, until Coombs in 1978 placed in the Nodosauridae within a larger Ankylosauria . In 1996 Kenneth Carpenter e.a. refined this to the Polacanthinae . An alternative hypothesis, first suggested by Tracy Lee Ford in 2000,
1378-520: The Wight specimens are not the original bones, which have been lost, but casts which at best could have been used as plastotypes . The scapula belongs to an indeterminate thyreophoran . In 1982 Justin Delair named a genus Vectensia , without providing a specific name, based on specimen GH 981.45, an armour plate. Like the holotype of Polacanthus it was found at Barnes High, but reportedly in an older layer, of
1431-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
1484-414: The armour configuration. Hulke understood that Polacanthus had a large "pelvic shield" or "sacral shield", a single fused sheet of dermal bone over its hips (sacral area) which perhaps was not attached to the underlying bone and decorated with tubercles. This feature is shared with other " polacanthine " ( basal nodosaurids) dinosaurs such as Gastonia and Mymoorapelta . With the holotype, this shield
1537-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
1590-516: The author of the name, others give Fox, Owen or "Anonymous" as the author. The generic name is derived from Greek πολύς, polys , "many" and ἄκανθα, akantha , "thorn", in reference to the many spikes of the armour. The specific name honours Fox. The holotype , NHMUK PV R175 , was found in a layer of the Upper Wessex Formation dating from the Barremian . It is an incomplete skeleton with
1643-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
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1696-424: The description was published. In 1859, geologist Ernest P. Wilkins mentioned the presence in his collection of numerous scutes, spikes and vertebrae from Wight, referred by him to Hylaeosaurus . After his death, his collection was moved several times and the pieces were lost. A second partial skeleton, from which parts had been removed since 1876, was identified and fully excavated by Dr. William T. Blows in 1979; it
1749-611: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
1802-663: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
1855-476: The genus Polacanthus in the past. In 1924, Edwin Hennig named a Polacanthus becklesi , the specific name honouring collector Samuel Beckles , based on specimen BMNH R1926, a piece of an ilium associated with armour plates, found on Wight in the nineteenth century. Today this is often considered a junior synonym of P. foxii . It was assumed to be a different species because the armour is smoother on top, but this
1908-399: The head, neck, anterior armour and forelimbs missing but including dorsal vertebrae, a sacral rod of five dorsosacrals, the sacrum, most of the pelvis, most of the left hindleg, the right thighbone, twenty-two tail vertebrae, ribs, chevrons, ossified tendons, a pelvic shield, twenty-two spikes and numerous ossicles. The skeleton was in 1881 studied by John Whitaker Hulke , while it was still in
1961-556: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
2014-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
2067-466: The left side and seven of the right. As the spikes are asymmetrical their position can more or less be deduced. Blows in 1987 basically agreed with Nopcsa but also distinguished three spike types, a Type A, B and C, allowing him to classify additional fossil finds, which often differed from the holotype spikes in several details. In 2013 a footprint was found by Henley Hobbs and his father on the Isle of Wight. Now
2120-419: The name is an invalid nomen ex dissertatione . Also it has been suggested that Polacanthus would be simply identical to Hylaeosaurus armatus . This was rejected by Blows in 1987, because of differences in age and anatomy. A possible identity is hard to prove or disprove as there are few overlapping elements in their holotypes. In 1928, Nopcsa named a new genus and species Polacanthoides ponderosus , based on
2173-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
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2226-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
2279-415: The pieces together with Canada balsam , much to the wonder of Hulke who in 1881 had called this a hopeless undertaking. This allowed Hulke to redescribe the specimen in 1887, with a special attention to the armour arrangement. In 1905, when it was mounted by the museum, the specimen was again described by Franz Nopcsa who for the first time provided an illustration of the possible spike configuration. Later,
2332-551: The possession of Fox. Hulke published the first detailed description of the find, noting that the specimen had badly deteriorated over the years, the dermal armour having almost fully fallen apart. The same year Fox died, his collection was acquired by the British Museum of Natural History , including the Polacanthus fossil. This was after arrival in the museum in 1882, reassembled by preparator Caleb Barlow, painstakingly putting all
2385-495: The rear half of the creature. It grew to about 5 metres (16 ft) long. Its body was covered with armour plates and spikes. It possibly was a basal member of the Nodosauridae . Polacanthus was a medium-sized ankylosaur. In 2010, Gregory S. Paul estimated its length at 5 metres (16 ft), its weight at 2 tonnes (2.2 short tons). Thomas Holtz gave a lower estimation of 4 metres (13 ft) and 227-454 kg (500-1.000 lbs) in 2012. Its hindlimbs are relatively long for an ankylosaur, with
2438-473: The specimen was stored in the museum basement. Numerous other specimens from Wight and Great Britain have since been referred to Polacanthus . These mostly consist of single bones or armour elements. Several specimens that were discovered prior to the holotype were at various points considered to belong to Polacanthus . In 1843 John Edward Lee reported the discovery on Wight of three such specimens, consisting only of armour pieces. They were already lost before
2491-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
2544-580: The vertebrae and dermal armour. It is named after the village of Rudgwick in West Sussex and was discovered at a Rudgwick Brickworks Company quarry, at the quarry floor in gray-green marl beds of the Wessex Formation. Barremian age, approximately 124–132 million years ago. In 2015, Blows made it a separate genus Horshamosaurus . In 1971, Polacanthus foxii was by Walter Coombs renamed into Hylaeosaurus foxi . This has found no acceptance, and
2597-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
2650-440: Was hypothesised by Nopcsa. He thought that both the tail and the front of the body including the neck featured two parallel rows of spikes, one per side. On the front body each row would have consisted of five spikes and he claimed that seven of these had been conserved with the fossil, five of the right side and two of the left. The tail rows would have consisted of twenty-two shorter pairs, fifteen spikes being still extant, eight of
2703-514: Was likely caused by water erosion of the fossil. In 1987, William T. Blows claimed that the American Hoplitosaurus was a species of Polacanthus , renaming it into Polacanthus marshi . Though this gained some popularity in the early 1990s, today the identity is generally rejected. In 1996, a Polacanthus rudgwickensis was named by Blows, after a review of some fossil material found in 1985 and thought to have been Iguanodon , which
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#17328588422062756-515: Was on display at the Horsham Museum in Sussex . The material, holotype HORSM 1988.1546, is fragmentary and includes several incomplete vertebrae , a partial scapulocoracoid, the distal end of a humerus , a nearly complete right tibia , rib fragments, and two osteoderms . P. rudgwickensis seems to have been about 30% longer than type species P. foxii and differs from it in numerous characters of
2809-791: Was ultimately rejected. In September 1865, Fox in a lecture to the British Association reported on the find and let it be named Polacanthus foxii by Owen, hereby perhaps circumventing the convention that an author does not name a taxon after himself. The text of the lecture, only published in 1866, was more or less reproduced by him in anonymous articles in the Geological Magazine and the Illustrated London News of 16 September 1865. This procedure caused some confusion as no corresponding 1865 publication by Owen exists. Some have therefore contended that Thomas Huxley in 1867 became
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