![]() ![]() “Unlike the ankylosaurs of the northern hemisphere, our new dinosaur possesses light armor, slender legs, and a smaller size,” he said. The study noted that very few ankylosaurs had been found from southern Gondwana - the lower part of the ancient supercontinent Pangea. Stegouros, which means “roofed tail” in Greek and “elenggassen” is from Aonikenk, the language of the original inhabitants of Patagonia, and refers to a mythological armored beast. ![]() The most similar feature would be the tail of a giant armadillo, but they are also extinct, he added. But unlike these creatures, the dinosaur possessed true bones under the scales. He said it resembled the tail of a rattlesnake or spiny-tailed lizard. “The tail is extremely strange, as it is short for a dinosaur and the posterior half is encased in dermal bones (bones that grow in the skin) forming a unique (tail) weapon,” said Sergio Soto Acuña, main author of the study and a doctoral student at the Universidad de Chile, via email. The dinosaur’s tail had seven pairs of flattened, bony deposits fused together in a frond-like structure. While its skull had features in common with other ankylosaurs, its tail weaponry was “bizarre,” according to the study, which was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The dinosaur, named Stegouros elengassen, had evolved a large tail weapon unlike those seen in other armored dinosaurs such as the paired spikes of Stegosaurus and the club-like tail of Ankylosaurus. ![]()
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