Stegosaurus

Characteristics

Everyone loves Stegosaurus except for people of the 1900s who thought it was the Grotesque animal to have ever lived. Walking quadrupedally with hindlimbs that were longer than its forelimbs with a curved back that let its tail hang upward. Stegosaurus had 17 to 22 plates roofing the skin on its back that were made of ossified bone. The largest plates were placed along the hip and could reach 24 by 24 inches as they decrease in size approaching the head and thagomizer. They were used for defense, protecting their back, neck and tail from carnivores, supported in the fossil record by a plate found to have been gnawed on by an Allosaurus. As well as being for display, likely having bright colors the males with the largest and brightest plates were most likely to attract a mate. A thagomizer is the official name for the pairs of tail spikes on Stegosaurs. The 2 pairs of spikes that reached 2 feet in length were undeniably a weapon, swinging spikes into predators. Stegosaurus' intelligence was less than admirable only having a brain the size of a walnut; early paleontologists thought that it must have had a second brain within its tail or *rectum* to make up for its shortcoming.

Media Deptictions

Jurassic Park: The Lost World Featured in both jurassic episodes. In one it’s thought that stegosaurus could flush their plates with blood to make them brighter and more intimidating but this has been debunked.

Walking with Dinosaurs Upon receiving fan mail from a child disappointed that his favorite dinosaur stegosaurus, wasn't in Jurassic Park, although it was in the novel being the sick dinosaur instead of the (Triceratops https://skeletron8000.neocities.org/Mesozoic/Triceratops). The lost world Stegosaurus are massive in their debut scene, at certain angles they look twice as large as their real-life counterparts