Named by James Kirkland in 1998 from material recovered in Grand County Utah, more complete material exists for Gastonia than for any other polacanthine ankylosaur.[1] Unfortunately, a wealth of disarticulated material from a bonebed presents problems as it can be hard to tell how many spikes a particular Gastonia actually had.[1] Gastonia was named after Robert Gaston, the discoverer of the genus. Robert Gaston is a paleoartist, who makes a living from creating museum quality casts and replicas of fossils for private and public collections.