Many dinosaurs are strange. But one of the strangest is Stegosaurus. Imagine what you would look like if you walked on your feet and your elbows! Well, that’s sort of what Stegosaurus looked like. Its back legs were twice as long as its front legs. That meant its hips were stuck way up in the air – 9-13 feet! Its head and shoulders were close to the ground, and its back curved like a slide down to its tail. From front to back it was about 24-30 feet long, and it weighed about 5 ½ tons. In a bowling alley, it would take just two stegosaurs to stretch from the beginning of the alley all the way down to the bowling pins.
That was certainly a strange shape, but Stegosaurus had an even stranger mouth. The front of its mouth was a beak, like that of a parrot or turtle. Most plant eaters have strong teeth that can grind up food, but not Stegosaurus. In the back of its mouth, it had rows of small, weak teeth. Its jaws could only move up and down, not to the side, which made chewing hard. As you can imagine, all this made it hard for Stegosaurus to eat. It could break off a mouthful of plants, but it couldn’t really chew them up very well before swallowing them. So, most things went down whole. There’s no evidence to indicate that it ate rocks (called gastroliths) as did other dinosaurs that couldn’t chew. The rocks helped break up the food in a special sac called a gizzard. But Stegosaurus didn’t do this. So, scientists have no idea how this strange creature managed to digest its food.
Stegosaurus not only had trouble eating – it also had trouble thinking. The Stegosaurus had a tiny head and probably the smallest brain compared to its size of any dinosaur. It was only about as big as a golf ball or walnut.
Stegosaurus might not have been very smart, but it knew enough to avoid somebody who tried to take a bite out of it. And there were plenty of creatures that wanted to take a bite out of Stegosaurus.
The Stegosaurus lived at the same time as the fierce Allosaurus and many other meat eaters. It couldn’t run fast, and it couldn’t think fast. It had to have some way to protect itself – so it grew a very strange weapon. Most dinosaurs that needed to defend themselves grew sharp claws on their feet or horns on their heads. But Stegosaurus did things backwards. It grew four, foot-long spikes on the end of its tail!
These spikes were good weapons and helped the Stegosaurus, but they were not good enough to fight off a determined attack. So, Stegosaurus’ best chance for survival was either to hide from meat eaters (and it was too big to do that!) or to stay with a herd of stegosaurs. Like any bully, an Allosaurus would rather attack a Stegosaurus found alone than one with a lot of friends nearby.
Probably the weirdest thing about Stegosaurus was the plates on its back. Scientists have wondered whether there was one row of plates or two, whether they stood up straight or lay down flat, and whether they were arranged in pairs or alternated. They have also wondered what the plates were for.
They weren’t dinner plates – but they may have helped keep Stegosaurus from becoming someone else’s dinner, serving as defense. This isn’t too likely because their whole sides had no covering. Just protecting the top wasn’t very effective.
Or the plates may have worked to keep the Stegosaurus from becoming too hot. Their position and shape seem designed to pull heat from the body of Stegosaurus and let the wind carry it away. But dinosaur species similar to Stegosaurus, such as Kentrosaurus, have spikes instead of plates, which wouldn’t work as heat dispersers. Most likely, the plates may have been just for display, to help Stegosaurus attract a mate. Scientists have considered all of these ideas, but they have not been able to agree. They continue to study the plates, but they may never know for sure why Stegosaurus had them.
Connor Ashbridge, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Scientists also don’t know much about the kind of life Stegosaurus led. Scientists have found Stegosaurus footprints which seem to indicate it traveled in herds, living on flat floodplains and in conifer forests bordering rivers. It is likely it ate plants that grew close to the ground, such as mosses or ferns. They think it laid eggs and that it probably left its babies on their own to take care of themselves because they weren’t smart enough to take care of them. Many reptiles, such as sea turtles and snakes, do this. But scientists don’t know for sure. There will always be things we don’t know about Stegosaurus. But that’s part of the fascination of this strange creature.
Sources (Click Me!)
Naish, Darren. “The Stegosaurus Plate Controversy.” Scientific American. 11 July 2016. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/tetrapod-zoology/the-stegosaurus-plate-controversy/
Norman, David. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs. Crescent Books, 1985.
Rafferty, John P. “Stegosaurus.” Britannica. 10 July 2024. https://www.britannica.com/animal/ ornithischian
Riehecky, Janet. Stegosaurus. The Child’s World, 1988.
Title Image from https://wallpaperaccess.com/stegosaurus
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