Troll_Man

WWD: Stegosaurus stenops

Added 2023-04-19 09:08:08 +0000 UTC

Come on, everyone knows this dinosaur. Probably second in popularity, only behind T. rex, and why wouldn't it be? It has such an incredibly memorable and fantastical form. For the most part, its portrayal in WWD is alright, but there are a number of minor aspects we know now to be in error.

When threatened by the Allosaurus, it's depicted as being able to flush blood into its dorsal plates as a threat display. However, it's now known that the plates were probably covered in a sheet of keratin in life, making this impossible, although it was always highly speculative to begin with. I included the colours here, but I imagine this is a male coming into his breeding colours, and the colour is shed to the duller shade seen in the back plates later on (which is also speculative, but known to occur in some modern bird species). It's possible the keratinous sheaths extended the size of the plates considerably larger in life, but this is a conservative construction.

Another is the size; Stegosaurus was a pretty big animal, at perhaps five or six metric tonnes in weight, and nearly eight metres long. But, the series makes them even bigger, at up to seven tonnes heavy and eleven metres long. More complete fossils have also indicated its neck and tail were both longer, and its tail spikes were oriented more outward and less vertically than traditionally thought (logically, this made it better for swiping at predators from the sides).

The series also depicts Stegosaurus as being an aggressive and solitary animal, but stegosaur footprints from the Morrison Formation strongly suggest that it was actually a social and herd-dwelling animal. Also, again, the foot anatomy is wrong; Stegosaurus only had two clawed toes on the front feet.

It's not mentioned in the series, nor as well known as its dorsal plates and thagomizer, but Stegosaurus also had small bony knobs forming a dense layer on the underside of its neck under its skin, which was probably a vital defence for an animal whose throat was just at biting height for the region's large predators.