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The Stegosaurus was a large herbivorous dinosaur which flourished in the Late Jurassic period. It is one of the most popular dinosaurs in children's fiction, and among the most easily identifiable, owing to the distinctive double row of kite-shaped plates along its back and four long spikes on its tail; an arrangement now termed a thagomizer. Its name is derived from these plates, and means "roofed" or "covered lizard" in Greek.
Characteristics
Stegosaurus is the largest stegosaurian, and reached up to 9 meters (30 feet) in length, and 5,000 kg (5.5 short tons) in mass, though most species never exceeded 7 meters (23 feet), and about 2,000 kg (2 short tons).
The largest plates were 60 centimeters (2 feet) wide and 60 centimeters tall. These were situated over the hips. No one knows the purpose of these plates. The fact that these structures would have appeared to increase the height of the animal suggests that they were display structures used to intimidate enemies or impress potential mates. However, the most recent theory is that they helped control the body temperature. The plates have blood vessels running through grooves in them. Wind flowing around the plates would have cooled the blood flowing through them.
The skull of Stegosaurus was long and narrow, and its head was carried close to the ground, probably no higher than 1 meter (3 feet) . It is often said that the stegosaurus had a "brain the size of a walnut". It is also thought to have had a secondary nerve centre on the lower spinal cord (often misleadingly described as a "second brain") to control the legs and tail.
In fiction
As one of the most recognizable dinosaurs, the Stegosaurus has seen its share of screen time. In the classic monster film, King Kong (1933), the first creature the band of rescuers meet as they chase the abducted Fay Wray deep into Skull Island is a roaring Stegosaurus, which behaves like an irritable rhinoceros, and charges. It eventually goes down under several fusillades of small arms fire.
More recently, a Stegosaurus tried to thagomize a paleontologist in Stephen Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). In both films, the Stegosaurus was oversized, and fairly inaccurate.
External links
- Stegosaurus "roofed lizard" (http://dinosauricon.com/genera/stegosaurus.html), by T. Mike Keesey at The Dinosauricon.
- Stegosaurus (http://www.dinodata.net/Dd/Namelist/Tabs/S113.htm), at DinoData.
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