Acanthopholis (; meaning "spiny scales") is a genus of ankylosaurian dinosaur in the family Nodosauridae that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period of England. A single species, A. horrida, exists. History 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, being derived from Greek άκανθα akantha meaning 'spine' or 'thorn' and φόλις pholis meaning 'scale'. 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. The type specimens, cotypes GSM 109045-GSM 109058, were found in the Chalk Group, a formation itself dating to the Albian to Cenomanian stages around 100 million years ago. The specimens consist of three teeth, a basicranium, a dorsal vertebra, spikes and scutes. In 1869 Harry Govier Seeley informally named several new species of the genus based on remains from the Cambridge Greensand: "Acanthopholis macrocercus", based on specimens CAMSM B55570-55609; "Acanthopholis platypus" (CAMSM B55454-55461); and "Acanthopholis stereocercus" (CAMSM B55558-55569). Seeley (1871) formally described Acanthopholis platypus as a new species, and in his 1876 description of the sauropod Macrurosaurus semnus he considered the metatarsals included in the A. platypus type material to be possibly conspecific with Macrurosaurus. Later, Seeley split the material of Acanthopholis stereocercus and based a new species of Anoplosaurus on part of it: Anoplosaurus major. He also described a new species, Acanthopholis eucercus, on the basis of six caudal vertebrae (CAMSM 55552-55557). In 1902 however Franz Nopcsa changed it into another species of Acanthopholis: Acanthopholis major. Nopcsa at the same time renamed Anoplosaurus curtonotus into Acanthopholis curtonotus. In 1879 Seeley named the genus Syngonosaurus based on part of the type material of "A. macrocercus". In 1956 Friedrich von Huene renamed A. platypus into Macrurosaurus platypus. In 1999 Xabier Pereda-Superbiola and Paul M. Barrett reviewed all Acanthopholis material. They concluded that all species were nomina dubia whose syntype specimens were composites