Valuations were introduced in De Bruyn and Vandecasteele (Valuations of near polygons, preprint, 2004) as a very important tool for classifying near polygons. In the present paper we study valuations of dual polar spaces. We will introduce the class of the SDPS-valuations and characterize these valuations. We will show that a valuation of a finite thick dual polar space is the extension of an SDPS-valuation if and only if no induced hex valuation is ovoidal or semi-classical. Each

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... will also give rise to a geometric hyperplane of the dual polar space.