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
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. 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
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 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 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 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 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,
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 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 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 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 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. 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
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