How Did Ankylosaurus Work?

This genus of plant-eating dinosaurs had awesomely heavy armor, might've had a great sense of smell, and some had a serious defensive weapon in their tail. Learn more about ankylosaurs in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum here, it's hard to read anything about
dinosaurs without bringing along preconceived notions of what the creatures
might have looked or acted like. Most people have either
read books as children or watched television or movies that
depicted dinosaurs as massive and monstrous creatures seeking to destroy

(00:25):
or devour anything in their path. Some of those animals,
like Tyrannosaurus, were huge predators, but not all dinosaurs fit
that bill. Enter the anchylosaur. This four legged dino was
certainly big. The largest anchylosaurus ever found was over twenty
ft or six meters long and weighed around four tons.

(00:46):
But and Kylosaurus was an herbivore plant eating tank of
an animal, and we do mean tank. The Ankylosaurus was
covered with thick bony plates, a defense that came in
handy for this hefty herbivore and lented name and Kylosaurus
means fused lizard in Greek. The bony plates were fused
to the dinosaurs skull and other body parts, making it

(01:08):
extremely sturdy. We spoke via email with Dr Hans Seuss,
the senior research geologist and curator of Fossil Vertebrates in
the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum
of Natural History in Washington, d C. He said the
first line of defense was their outer armor, composed of
bony plates. In fact, and kylosaurs were so heavily armored

(01:31):
that even their upper eyelid was protected by a bony plate.
One group of encylosaurs had massive clubs of bone at
the end of their tails, and they could swing their
tails to inflict massive damage on the legs of an
attacking predator. The Nkylosaurus's body was thick and squat, its
legs sturdy. It had a broad, triangular shaped skull, but
it was the armor that made the difference. Hard plates

(01:54):
covered with bony spikes jutting from its flanks and bony
knobs called osteoderms or scutes retreating from its back. Horn
proturbances stood out above each eye and on the sides
of the face. Not all in kylosaurs had the same
armor patterning, but all had armor to protect them from predators,
most notably Tyrannosaurus and the like. And kylosaurs needed that

(02:16):
protection because they spent most of the day eating massive
amounts of food, stripping leaves from low lying plants. Sus
said they have small teeth similar to those of present
day plant eating lizards. An amazing discovery of a nearly
perfect ankylosaur skeleton from Alberta in Canada preserved gut contents
that confirmed that ankylosaurs ate plants. However, Sus also shared

(02:39):
a startling discovery. He said one small boned anchylosaur recently
discovered in northern China apparently went into lakes and even
ate small fish. The first ankylosaur fossil was discovered by
barn and Brown and the Hell Creek Formation in Montana
in nineteen o six, but in kylosaurs have been found
in many places throughout the world, including Europe, Antarctica, Asia, Australia,

(03:01):
and North and South America. SEUs said. In fact, one
of the first dinosaurs ever to be discovered was it
anchylosaur from southern England, discovered in eighteen thirty one, and
kylosaurs had a complex nasal system that included a large
cavity volume for the region of the brain that handles
the sense of smell. Study in the Journal of Anatomy

(03:22):
suggested that ankylosaurs may have had a highly developed sense
of smell in order to find food and avoid predators.
We don't know whether or not in kylosaurs were social
as adults, so whether they moved in herds. According to SEUs,
there's simply no evidence one way or the other. Though
he said that a group of very young and kylosaurs
were discovered in the Gobi Desert, and though in Kylosaur's

(03:45):
armor and body type might bring to mind thoughts of
alligators and crocodiles, SEUs says they're not related. Birds are
still the closest living relatives of all dinosaurs. Interestingly, and
Kylosaurus was estimated to have lived between sixty six point
eight million to sixty five point five million years ago
in North America during the Late Cretaceous period, which means

(04:05):
and kylosaurs were among the last dinosaurs roaming the earth.
According to the U S Geological Survey, denosaurs went extinct
about sixty five billion years ago at the end of
the Cretaceous period. One fascinating and kylosaur discovery in in
Montana's Judith River Formation, for a striking and spiky resemblance
to the mythical monster zul from the movie Ghostbusters. You

(04:28):
know there is no data, only zul the terror dogs
that Dana and Lewis turn into. The paleontologists who made
the discovery were so struck by the similarity between the
recovered skull and the movie monster that they named the
specimen zul care vastatur, which means destroyer of shins in
Latin and refers to then kylosaurs club like leg crushing tail.

(04:54):
Today's episode was written by Patty Rescus and produced by
Tyler Klang. For more in this and lots of other
topics that were very big and Samaria, visit how stuff
works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I
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