Tag: Stegosaurus

I know you are probably thinking…what is he doing? Ok…humor me today, please. 

I’m veering away from my usual subject of pop culture…but…you know what? Dinosaurs may fit into that category. Lately, I’ve been really getting into dinosaurs and I have watched a lot of programs about them like Walking With Dinosaurs and Planet Dinosaur which I would recommend both…and yes all the Jurassic Park/World films just to see them.

Dinosaurs were separated by both time and geography. The Age of Dinosaurs (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geologic periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods).

When I was in first grade, I learned about dinosaurs. We were all assigned one to make a Play-Doh model of, and I was assigned the Stegosaurus. Okay, it wasn’t the cool T-Rex or Spinosaurus but cool all the same. The Stegosaurus lived in the late Jurassic period. It was hunted not by the T-Rex but by the Allosaurus because it was in the same period. The T-Rex would come later in the late Cretaceous period. 

Ok enough of the technical stuff…. what struck me about these beautiful animals were the dermal plates on the back with the killer spikes or thagomizers on its tail.

They were deadly if they landed. They have found fossils with Allosaurus’s teeth marks in Stegosauruses but they have also found the huge thagomizer lodged in an Allosaurus. These spikes could get up to 3-4 feet long… if you were a carnivore you had to think twice about having a Stegosaurus for dinner. 

Here is an example of an Allosaurus meeting its match. 

It has been “my” dinosaur since first grade and they are one of the most recognizable dinosaurs. The biggest knock on this one is the small brain pan size so it wasn’t the brightest dino.  At one time it was thought they had two brains because they were so long but now they don’t think that. They were 30 ft long and 14 ft tall. In other words about as tall as a Giraffe and as long as a London Bus. If they ever brought dinosaurs back to life…this is the one I would like to see most. 

Thank you all for humoring me today. I may feature a dinosaur once in a while…kinda like an animal appreciation day. 

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