Stegosaurus is one of those iconic dinosaurs that appears everywhere. So, today, we’re gonna look at the finer details of this dino and really examine the animal behind the name! Let’s get started.
Stegosaurus lived in the Late Jurassic in North America, alongside Brontosaurus and Allosaurus. It was closely related to Kentrosaurus from Tanzania. The stegosaurs were an ancient line that split from ornithopods like the hadrosaurs and iguanodonts in the Early Jurassic. Stegosaurus was believed to be one of the last stegosaurs, until new discoveries showed that the last stegosaurs survived in India and Mongolia in the Late Cretaceous.
Stegosaurus prominently featured in the novel Jurassic Park, but its role was cut out and replaced by a Triceratops in the movie. It reappeared in The Lost World, though, but was too large. Something that Stegosaurus is known for are the enormous plates adorning its back. Nobody knows what they were used for, although there have been many theories. One fanciful adaptation in fiction (long before Jurassic Park) is in the novel Tarzan at the Earth’s Core, in which both stegosaurs and Triceratops are featured as evolving to become carnivorous. Stegosaurus uses its plates as a sort of paraglider, extending them to glide over cliffs and valleys towards its unfortunate prey.
While the novel is a fun read, it completely deviated from scientific knowledge. Stegosaurus plates were probably not used for gliding, as the animal was too heavy for the plates to stop it from falling. The leading theory is thermoregulation, in which they acted like solar panels to capture heat from the sun for energy, as Stegosaurus was probably cold-blooded. Another theory is that the plates were for display. This can be taken in two ways: First, the plates were used to attract mates; secondly, the plates were used to scare predators away, like a cat puffs it fur to make itself look bigger. Or, the plates functioned as a defensive mechanism, with a sharp covering of keratin. This is highly debated, though, and the only definitive means of defense that Stegosaurus had were the “thagomizers” or tail spikes. These were originally portrayed as pointing upward, but now we know that they pointed sideways.
We know a lot about stegosaurs, but there’s still a lot we don’t know (As with most dinosaurs. I feel like I say this way too much :D)
Anay Ganesh 