NOTE: First I want to remind you that the printable versions of my drawings are found by clicking on the buttons up top and scrolling down. There are currently over 800 coloring pages on this blog.
New Stegosaur Adratiklit boulahafa
This is a new discovery that was found in Morocco. It lived about 168 million years ago in the Mid-Jurassaic Period. It was an armored plant eater and it The Genus name means Mountain Lizard. The species name is where the fossilized skeleton parts were found. It is estimated that this herbiverous dinosaur was 20 feet or about 6 meters long. It was a type of Stegosaur. It is the oldest Stegosaur fossil ever found so we now know that Stegosaurs appeared or evolved into being sooner than we thought. All of the other found Stegosaurs date to around 150 million years ago.
Only a few bones were found but they clearly were from a new type of Stegosaur. The bones look to be more like the European Stegosaurs, not the North American Stegosaurs like Stegosaurus. In fact,
Stegosaurus ungulatus was almost 40 feet or 12 meters long. That is twice the size of Adratiklit.
Stegosaurus ungulatus was the largest Stegosaur ever discovered. It is an iconic dinosaur so I was surprised tonight when I realized that I had never drawn one for this blog. OR at least I have not drawn a Stegosaur for a long time. The old view of Stegosaurs, before the Dinosaur Renaissance, was that it was a very dumb and slow moving animal. There even was a thought that it dragged its tail around. The new view is that Stegosaurus was an active and very successful animal with the ability to defend itself with spikes that were around 3 feet or 1 meter long. We now think that Stegosaurs held their tail up and could wield it like a deadly defensive weapon. Notice this in the bottom drawing of a Stegosaurus in our new view. It is true that the skull and brain were small for such a large animal. But it was still clearly a sucessful genus because over 12 species have been found in many parts of the world. Other Stegosaurs with even more spikes and less plates include the Stegosaur Adratiklit boulahafa that is the first drawing on tonight's post. There was also Kentrosaurus, that had mainly spikes and less or no plates.
Stegosaurus ungulatus was the largest Stegosaur ever discovered. It is an iconic dinosaur so I was surprised tonight when I realized that I had never drawn one for this blog. OR at least I have not drawn a Stegosaur for a long time. The old view of Stegosaurs, before the Dinosaur Renaissance, was that it was a very dumb and slow moving animal. There even was a thought that it dragged its tail around. The new view is that Stegosaurus was an active and very successful animal with the ability to defend itself with spikes that were around 3 feet or 1 meter long. We now think that Stegosaurs held their tail up and could wield it like a deadly defensive weapon. Notice this in the bottom drawing of a Stegosaurus in our new view. It is true that the skull and brain were small for such a large animal. But it was still clearly a sucessful genus because over 12 species have been found in many parts of the world. Other Stegosaurs with even more spikes and less plates include the Stegosaur Adratiklit boulahafa that is the first drawing on tonight's post. There was also Kentrosaurus, that had mainly spikes and less or no plates.
Old view of Stegosaurus
Kentrosaurus feeding
NOTE: These drawings are all new. I chose to do their scale markings rather similar. These drawings can be found in printable form by clicking on the buttons up top. . . either click on . . . . . Paleontology . . . . .or . . . .All Printables. Scroll down the drop down menu to the bottom for these new drawings.
No comments:
Post a Comment