Ankylosaurus was an amazing dinosaur! Let’s learn five awesome Ankylosaurus facts for kids.
The Ankylosaurus name comes from the Greek words meaning “fused lizard”. This name refers to its tough outer armour. Ankylosaurus had plates of bone connected under a layer of keratin., embedded in the skin. Keratin is a strong protein found in hair and fingernails. Not only did these special bones exist on the Ankylosaurus’ back but also on its eyelids. These bony plates were known as scutes.
The Ankylosaurus’ skull was also very protected by these bony plates, leaving very little space for its brain. For this reason, the Ankylosaurus’ brain was very small. The Ankylosaurus’ neck had the biggest cluster of armour, probably to protect this sensitive part of the body from attackers.
Ankylosaurus had a club-shaped tail, made out of bones fused together. The main purpose of this tail was for protection. If a predator attacked, the Ankylosaurus would swing its tail with huge force to injure the predator. Because of its armour and vast size, the Ankylosaurus was quite difficult to attack. The Ankylosaurus’ main predator would have been the Tyrannosaurus rex if it was brave or hungry enough.
Ankylosaurus had a wide beak and rows of small teeth, which allowed it to graze on low-growing vegetation, plants and trees. Ankylosaurus’s short legs and low mouth position meant it could not reach leaves and plants growing higher up. The Ankylosaurus also had a large tongue to move food around.
The first Ankylosaurus to be discovered was found in 1906 in the Hell Creek Formation. This is a very well-known dinosaur hotspot in Montana, USA. The fossil was found during an expedition led by the world famous palaeontologist Barnum Brown.He described the Ankylosaurus in detail in 1908. Brown named the specie he found the “Ankylosaurus magniventris”, which translates to “fused lizard with great belly’.
This accurately describes what the Ankylosaurus looks like. Even though more fossils have been found in the USA and Canada, to this day, no full complete Ankylosaurus fossil has yet to be found. The dinosaur roamed the earth in North America during the very end of the Cretaceous period. It was one of the last dinosaurs to have existed before the dinosaurs became extinct.
Ankylosaurus is a part of the Ornithischia order, and is also a member of the Ankylosauridae family.
Members of the Ankylosauridae family are part of a group of dinosaurs called Thyreophora. This group is better known as the ‘armoured dinosaurs’. Another dinosaur in this group would be the Stegosaurus, who has bony plates along its back also. However, its plates are big and flat and point up like a mohawk. The Ankylosaurus was a quadruped, meaning it moved on four limbs.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about Ankylosaurus as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic this dinosaur is, you can move on to learn about other dinosaurs like: Albertosaurus, Brachiosaurus, Triceratops, Compsognathus, Spinosaurus, Velociraptor, Archaeopteryx and Apatosaurus.
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