Stegosaurus: Giving a Whole New Meaning to the Word "Shingles".

Remember me? I still write about dinosaurs.


You may have noticed that all the dinosaurs I've written about, thus far, have all been from the Cretaceous Period. What gives, right? Luck, really. It just so happens that the rocks which are able to be excavated are dominantly from the Cretaceous, thus really only letting scientists discover dinos from that time period. Today, however, I'm going to talk to you about a famous dinosaur who lived during the Jurassic. And that guy, my friends, is stegosaurus.


Stegosaurus roamed the lands of Western North America 155-150 million years ago, although other stegosaurid specimens have been found as far away as Portugal, Southern India, China, and Southern Africa. These guys really knew how to put their passports to good use! Stegosaurus had a very distinctive and unusual posture, with short forelimbs, a heavily rounded back, and a low-lying head. Oh, and it also had a back lined with huge plates and a tail with four massive spikes on it. No biggie.

 
Stegosaurus means "roof(ed) lizard" and it got that name because, initially, it was believed that its plates laid flat along its back in shingle-like armor. No shit. There were actually scientists back in the day who seriously thought there was a dinosaur who walked around looking like a child's playhouse. Though, I must admit, I'd definitely hang out in a fucking dino shack! Even more hysterical, the spikes on Stegosaurus' tail are actually called "thagomizers". And do you know why they're called such? Because of The Far Side. I'm not even fucking kidding. In 1982, The Far Side featured a cartoon depicting a caveman teaching other fellow cavemen about the Stegosaurus, and said that the spikes were called thagomizers "after the late Thag Simmons." Now, either scientists are either horribly uncreative when naming things, or they have the best senses of humor ever.


Stegosaurus could grow up to 30 feet long, and weighed roughly 6,800 pounds. These fuckers were as big as an elephant and twice as heavy as a car, but had a brain the size of a dog's brain. I mean, I guess if you're an herbivore who just loafs around all day, you can pretty much get away with being the village idiot. And, contrary to popular belief, they did not have a second brain in their ass. Yes, yet another hilarious theory drummed up by some super smart scientist guy. What's kinda neat about Stegosaurus is that, unlike most dinosaurs, they actually possessed cheeks. This provided them room to chew and predigest their food, as well as being able to store more food than the majority of dinosaurs who lacked cheeks. Plus, it enabled them to make silly faces at one another during staring contests.


So, more about the plates and spikes. Stegosaurus had a double row of 17 kite-shaped plates, or scutes, which ran vertically along their spine. The largest plates, found over the hips, measured two feet high by two feet wide. They were made of bony material but were not solid. Instead, they had lattice structures and blood vessels throughout, which could "blush" red in either defense or when courting another sexy Stegosaurus. The end of their tail contained four long spikes, which extended out horizontally. The spikes could grow up to four feet long, thus giving these Jurassic beasts one hell of a defense mechanism, as well as proving themselves as the most punk rock of dinosaurs.