The stegosaurus is objectively the best dinosaur. Okay, that’s not how the word “objectively” works, but it is true that the stegosaurus is one of the all-time post popular dinosaurs. It’s big and weird and has both big plates and spikey spikes. And we know surprisingly little about it. Here’s more from Science Focus:
“Although they are iconic, stegosaurs are quite poorly-known as fossils,” says Dr Susannah Maidment, a palaeontologist at the museum. “Before [the NHM] specimen was discovered, we didn’t have a specimen that preserved all of the plates and spines in the correct place along the back, so we didn’t know how many there were. We didn’t even know how many vertebrae there were in the back or tail – so we could really only guess how long stegosaurs were.”
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Stegosaurus is known for the two rows of pointed plates that line its back and tail. Palaeontologists are still debating what these features were actually used for. They were embedded in the animal’s skin as opposed to being attached to its skeleton, so they may have been more useful in warding predators off than offering a robust defence against sharp teeth and claws.
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