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Callovosaurus (meaning "Callovian lizard") is a genus of dinosaur known from most of a left femur discovered in Middle Jurassic-age rocks of England. At times, it has been considered nomen dubium or a valid genus of basal iguanodontian, perhaps a dryosauridae.
The type species, C. leedsi, was first described by Richard Lydekker in 1889 as Camptosaurus leedsi, the specific name honouring collector Alfred Nicholson Leeds. Aside from Charles W. Gilmore suggesting in 1909 that it was probably more closely related to Dryosaurus than to Camptosaurus, Camptosaurus leedsi attracted little attention for decades until it was reviewed by Peter Galton. First noting its distinctiveness in a review of English , he then gave the species the new genus Callovosaurus in 1980, which he placed in Camptosauridae. While considered a dubious iguanodontian in several reviews, which refer to it as "Camptosaurus" leedsi, Jose Ignacio Ruiz-Omeñaca and coauthors have proposed that Callovosaurus is a valid genus, and the oldest known dryosaurid. Though a study published in 2025 from Łukasz Czepiński & Daniel Madzia found Callovosaurus to be more basal than once thought and found Callovosaurus outside of the family Dryosauridae and Dryomorpha as a whole.
The diet of Callovosaurus, like that of other iguanodontians, was plant material. It is one of the earliest known members of the iguanodontian lineage.
Palaeoecology
Callovosaurus was found in the lower Oxford Clay, which has yielded a diverse reptile assemblage: Ichthyosauria, , crocodyliformes, , sauropoda dinosaurs, the stegosauria Loricatosaurus and Lexovisaurus, and the ankylosauria Sarcolestes. These rocks were once thought to be somewhat younger, from the Oxfordian of the Late Jurassic, but they are now known to be middle Callovian in age.
(1999). 9781840281521, Marshall Editions. ISBN 9781840281521
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