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Growing up

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WHATS IN A NAME?

Stegosaurus’s smali, narrow skuli could only house a smali brain.

Its plates were probably brightly colored and used for display, to intimidate rivals and to attract mates.

Its plates were too fragile to be armor and lacked enough blood vessels to be able to control body temperaturę.

Its throat was covered with

)p dinosaurs, thyreophorans hatched from eggs. A few fossil eggs might be from thyreophorans, but no one has found a nest of thyreophoran eggs yet.

buttonlike scutes called ossicles.

^ Huge shoulder muscles allowed Stegosaurus to quickly turn, when whipping its taił.

**^w'‘ Stegosaurus had two pairs of long taił spikes for self-defense.

Some baby ankylosaurs have been discovered curled up together. This suggests that they lived together as youngsters.

The armored dinosaur Minmi is named after the place in Australia where it was found in the 1970s. For morę than a decade, Minmi had the shortest dinosaur name —now Mei is the shortest.

Baby Stegosaurus tracks were found in 2007. There were no adult tracks nearby, so maybe stegosaur babies took care of themselves.

Fossils show that thyreophoran babies had limited armor. The scutes grew as the animals matured.

Ankylosaur

armor

Short horns stuck outward backward from the back of the skuli in some ankylosaurs, such as this Gargoyleosaurus.

Ankylosaurus and Euoplocephalus had

armor plates on their eyelids.

Some ankylosaurs had an armor piąte over the cheek.

There was a mosaic of AA^armor on top of the skuli

Collarlike nngs of plates

m\/ororl tho tnn nf tho r

covered the top of the neck

In some ankylosaurs, long *^/*v^Jspikes stuck out from the neck and shoulders.

Some ankylosaurs had

itPQ nn thair armQ ar

scutes on their arms and legs, as well as on their bodies.

The ankylosaur Edmontonia had forked spikes. No one knows why.

The smali Chinese ankylosaur Liaoningosaurus had a large armor piąte over its belly.

Key thyreoph°raⁿ

fossil sites

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Louńnha, Powy Dorset, U.K-

A protective shield ^A/^grew over the hips of Polacanthus and some other ankylosaurs.

y**Y Some ankylosaurs had big, <fe^/fc\r^striangular scutes sticking out of the sides of their tails.

Armored dinosaurs

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