Aletopelta (/əˌliːtoʊˈpɛltə ˈkoʊmzi/; meaning 'wanderer shield') is a monospecific genus of basal ankylosaurid dinosaur from Southern California that lived during the Late Cretaceous (upper Campanian stage, 75.5 Ma) in what is now the Point Loma Formation.

The formation has yielded specimens pertaining to calcareous nannoplankton, foraminifers, scaphopods, pelecypods, gastropods, cephalopods, ostracods, decapods, echinoids, elasmobranchs, and actinopterygians, with the addition of a femur, right dentary containing teeth and cervical vertebrae of a hadrosaur.

[1][3] The type and only known specimen of Aletopelta was once a bloated carcass that had been washed out to sea, likely by a stream, which sank to the bottom with its underside facing upwards and became a miniature reef, as evidence by Pelecypoda such as Ostrea sp.

The carcass was also scavenged upon by marine invertebrates and sharks such as Squalicorax and Scapanorhynchus, which resulted with most of the long bones being hollow and many shallow pits on the osteoderms and ribs.

[2] The generic name, Aletopelta, is composed of the Greek words "aletes" (wanderer) and "pelte" (small shield), in reference to its armour and the fact that the tectonic plate containing the Peninsular Ranges Terrane was somewhere opposite the middle of Mexico in the Cretaceous, only moving northward due to plate tectonics, carrying the holotype specimen with it.

[5] Deméré & Coombs (1996) originally interpreted SDNHM 33909 as an indeterminate nodosaurid that showed similarities with Edmontonia, Panoplosaurus and Stegopelta but refrained from naming it as they considered it to be undiagnostic.

[1] Ford (2000) considered that SDNHM 33909 formed the clade Stegopeltinae, along with Stegopelta and Glyptodontopelta, within Ankylosauridae based on the presence of a pelvic shield composed of co-ossified hexagonal osteoderms.