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Stegosaurus was a large herbivorous dinosaur with distinctive plates and spikes on its back and tail. It lacked the ability to chew and swallowed plant material whole, aided by gastroliths. Its large size helped with thermoregulation and defense against predators like Allosaurus. Stegosaurids went extinct along with Stegosaurus.
Stegosaurus is an iconic dinosaur that lived for about 10 million years during the Late Jurassic period, about 155 to 145 million years ago. Stegosaurus was a large armored quadripedal herbivore with distinctive kite-shaped plates atop a strongly arched back and a pointed tail. The plates and spikes have been the subject of much speculation. It is thought that the plates helped with thermoregulation while the pointed tail served for defense. In total, Stegosaurus had 17 plates and four tail spikes.
Stegosaurus was the largest of the stegosaurids, the clade named after it, with an approximate length of 9 m (30 ft) and a height of 4 m (14 ft), although some specimens are up to 12 m (42 ft) long. feet). Stegosaurus is thought to have weighed around 5 tons, but its brain was tiny, smaller than a dog’s, with an estimated mass of just 80 grams. This helped contribute to the idea that dinosaurs were completely unintelligent, but the contemporary view among scientists is that dinosaurs in general were more intelligent than popular opinion believes.
Analysis of Stegosaurus teeth shows that they lacked the ability to chew, instead severing off plant material and swallowing it whole. Their digestion was assisted by gastric stones called gastroliths, which would have mechanically broken down plant material as they were mixed by stomach muscles. Gastroliths have also been found in contemporary sauropods, even larger herbivores from an entirely different group of dinosaurs. It is not known whether Stegosaurus was able to stand on its hind legs, but if it could, it would have had prime access to the elevated foliage.
Like many other dinosaurs, Stegosaurus benefited from the thermoregulatory properties of its large size. It’s not yet clear how fast the dinosaurs’ metabolisms were, but it’s likely they were somewhere between the “warm-blooded” mammals and “cold-blooded” reptiles of today. As a result, they would have benefited from large bodies that helped retain heat. This strategy has been pursued to an extreme in sauropods, herbivores much larger than Stegosaurus.
Stegosaurus was supposed to defend itself against canivorous theropod dinosaurs like Allosaurus, and indeed, Allosaurus fossils have been found with skeletal stings that closely match the shape of Stegosaurus’ tail spikes. Stegosaurids in general went extinct not long after Stegosaurus itself went extinct, leaving the rest of the dinosaur era without these fascinating armored beasts.
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