Acanthopholis

Acathopholis means "spiny scales". It is an ankylosaurid that lived during the Early Cretaceous Period in England. Its armor was rows of oval plates set into its skin, plus it had spikes jutting out of its neck and shoulder area along the spine. Its size estimated at 5 meters long and 380 kilograms weight.

Around 1865 commercial fossil collector John Griffiths found some dinosaurian remains, including osteoderms, at the shoreline near Folkestone in Kent, which he sold to the metallurgist Dr. John Percy. Percy brought them to the attention of Thomas Henry Huxley, who paid Griffiths to dig up all fossils he could find at the site. Despite being hampered by the fact that it was located between the tidemarks, he managed to uncover several additional bones and parts of the body armour.

In 1867 Huxley named the genus and species Acanthopholis horridus. The dinosaur's generic name refers to its armour. The specific name horridus means 'frightening' or 'rough' in Latin. Arthur Smith Woodward emended the species name to Acanthopholis horrida in 1890 because pholis is feminine. In 1923 Nopcsa created a separate family Acanthopholidae.