Description
- Ankylosauridae Dinosaur Tooth – Most likely Euplocephalus
- Cretaceous Age
- Judith River Formation
- Montana
- Specimen measures approx. 3/8″ long and will come in the 1.25″ Gem Jar as Shown
Ankylosauria (“crooked lizard”), is a group of herbivorous dinosaurs of the order Ornithischia. It includes the great majority of dinosaurs with armor in the form of bony osteoderms. Ankylosaurs were bulky quadrupeds, with short, powerful limbs. They are first known to have appeared in the early Jurassic Period of China, and persisted until the end of the Cretaceous Period. They have been found on every continent except Africa. The first dinosaur ever discovered in Antarctica was the ankylosaurian Antarctopelta, fossils of which were recovered from Ross Island in 1986.
All ankylosaurians had armor over much of their bodies, mostly scutes and nodules, with large spines in some cases. The scutes, or plates, are rectangular to oval objects organized in transverse (side to side) rows, often with keels on the upper surface. Smaller nodules and plates filled in the open spaces between large plates. In all three groups, the first two rows of plates tend to form a sort of half-ring around the neck; in nodosaurids, this comes from adjacent plates fusing with each other (and there is a third row as well), while ankylosaurids usually have the plates fused to the top of another band of bone. The skull has armor plastered on to it, including a distinctive piece on the outside-rear of the lower jaw.
