Stegosaurus

Stegosaurus means “roof lizard”. It was originally thought that the plates lay flat on top of this creature.

Stegosaurus is a very distinctive dinosaur on account of the large plates that line its back. It has still not been established how they were positioned. They may have been used for defence, but might also have been used to regulate the creature’s temperature Stegosaurus had a number of large spikes on its tail, which it almost certainly used to defend itself; for example, an Allosaurus skeleton has been unearthed with an injury that precisely matches the tail spike from a Stegosaurus.

Length: 8-9 m
Weight: 3-4 t

Age: Jurassic (157-147 mio years ago)

Herbivore

Did you know about Stegosaurus

that Stegosauras probably wasn’t the smartest dinosaur? Although it could measure up to 9 metres in length, its brain was the size of a walnut!