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.
Dravidosaurus blanfordi was described in 1979 by Ponnala Yadagiri and Krishnan Ayyasami,[1][2] based on fossils recovered from the Coniacian[3][4] Anaipadi Formation of the Trichinopoly Group in southern India during the 1970s.
[7] Yadigiri and Ayyasami identified several of the skull bones in GSI SR Pal 1, of which the most well-preserved were the parietals, frontals, supraorbitals, squamosal, and quadrate.
Although differing in some characteristics, they determined that the skull was similar to that of Stegosaurus and that the tooth, merely 3 millimetres (0.1 in) long, closely resembled the teeth referred to other stegosaurian genera such as Kentrosaurus.
[12] Among the features that distinguished GSI SR Pal 1 were the postfrontal being absent, the beak being slightly different from that of Stegosaurus, the postorbital being thin and straight, and the pterygoid being thick and rectangular.
[9] Examinations of the poorly preserved[12] fossils referred to Dravidosaurus have since their discovery caused some researchers to either doubt their identity as stegosaurian or consider the taxon a nomen dubium.
Chatterjee instead interpreted the Dravidosaurus fossil material he examined as the "highly weathered" pelvic and hindlimb elements of a plesiosaur, though presented no concrete morphological evidence.
[4] In 1996, Chaterjee and Dhiraj K. Rudra still formally classified Dravidosaurus as "Stegosauria nomen dubium", though they once again stated that they during their 1991 visit "could not see anything related to the stegosaurian plates and skull claimed by these authors" and maintained that the bones they had seen might be plesiosaurian.
This study pointed out that the skull and armor plates figured in the original description, specimens Chatterjee had admittedly not examined, were "certainly not plesiosaurian" but also stated that the fossils were in need of redescription.
[4] Similar criticism was offered by Galton & Upchurch (2004), who also noted that the skull and armor plate described in 1979 could not be from a plesiosaur and consequently maintained Dravidosaurus as a stegosaur.
[12] Fastovsky & Weishampel (2005) followed Galton & Upchurch's opinion, noting that features of the skull as well as the presence of plates and spikes suggested that Dravidosaurus was a stegosaur.
[22] The 'Dino Directory' of the London Natural History Museum, written by Paul Barrett, considers Dravidosaurus to be a stegosaurian dinosaur, noting that its fossils were "once thought" to have been plesiosaurian but also that its taxonomical classification is not yet agreed.
This would suggest either that the stegosaurian fossil record is poorly sampled throughout the world or that the stegosaurs persisted in what today is India for a long time after they had gone extinct elsewhere.
[24] In addition to the marine life found in the upper Anaipadi Formation, terrestrial matter was in the area evidently prone to being carried out to sea.
[24] The presence of large quantities of wood indicates that land with dense vegetation was located relatively close to the marine environment in which the Dravidosaurus fossils were buried, meaning that it is not impossible that it (if a terrestrial animal) could have been carried out to sea.