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Biography

Echinodon is a genus of heterodontosaurid dinosaur that lived during the earliest Cretaceous of southern England in the Berriasian epoch. The first specimens were jaw bones named Echinodon becklesii by Sir Richard Owen in 1861, and since their original description only additional teeth have been discovered. The specific name honours collector Samuel Beckles who discovered the material of Echinodon and many other taxa from across England, while the genus name translates as "prickly tooth" in reference to the dental anatomy of the taxon. Originally, Echinodon was considered to be a type of herbivorous lizard, though this was quickly revised to an intermediate ornithischian. It was referred to the clade Stegosauria based on general dental anatomy and incorrectly referred armour that was later identified as a turtle's. Echinodon was then referred to the early ornithischian family Fabrosauridae, which was later identified as an artificial group with Echinodon reassigned to Heterodontosauridae. While the family was originally considered to be closest to more derived Ornithopods, it was eventually reidentified as the most basal group of ornithischians, making Echinodon a taxon descended from many genera from the Early Jurassic, with a ghost lineage of 50 million years of unpreserved evolution. All specimens of Echinodon have been found in the Purbeck Group of Dorset, which has been variably considered to be from the latest Jurassic or the earliest Cretaceous. Current studies accept an Early Cretaceous Berriasian age, making Echinodon both the youngest and the smallest heterodontosaurid. Other dinosaurs it lived alongside include the ornithopod Owenodon and the theropod Nuthetes, which are both also fragmentary. An abundance of small mammals also lived alongside Echinodon, and the sediments show that the Purbeck Group was a variably lagoonal environment initially similar to the modern Mediterranean but became wetter over time.