Dravidosaurus

Dravidosaurus Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 89–86 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
The holotype skull of Dravidosaurus (GSI SR Pal 1) reconstructed as a stegosaurian skull per its original description, with elements identified in 1979 marked in red
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	†Ornithischia (?)
Genus:	†Dravidosaurus Yadagiri & Ayyasami, 1979
Species:	†D. blanfordi
Binomial name
†Dravidosaurus blanfordi Yadagiri & Ayyasami, 1979

Dravidosaurus is a controversial taxon of Late Cretaceous reptiles, variously interpreted as either a ornithischian (possibly a stegosaurian) dinosaur or a plesiosaur. The genus contains a single species, D. blanfordi, known from mostly poorly preserved fossils from the Coniacian (Late Cretaceous) of southern India.

Dravidosaurus was originally described as a late-surviving stegosaur in 1979, younger in age than other known stegosaurs by tens of millions of years. This classification was questioned by Sankar Chatterjee in 1991, who suggested that the fossils were actually plesiosaurian. Chatterjee did however not formally reclassify any of the fossil specimens and did not examine all of them. Since 1991, researchers have variously followed Chatterjee's assessment, maintained Dravidosaurus as a stegosaur, or considered it an indeterminate ornithischian dinosaur.

Researchers in favor of a stegosaurian identity point to the presence of plates and spikes among the fossils, as well as certain morphological features. In 2017, Peter Galton and Krishnan Ayyasami reaffirmed that Dravidosaurus was a stegosaur and announced that further likely stegosaurian fossils from the same original site were currently being studied.