Between 200 million years and 65 million years ago, dinosaurs ruled our world, but as unique as they are, lots of modern-day animals have similar attributes such as relatives or close species like when you think of big cats like Lions Tigers, etc. Dinosaurs were like that too, not all but some. Very close, even like Ankylosaurids. They have a lot of relatives and very close ones. They are also a dinosaur with some of the most preserved fossils.
There are many things unique about all kinds of Ankylosaurids from their armor to their weapon. Ankylosaurids almost all have a rock-like feature on the end of their tail that would be used as a blunt-force weapon. For example the basic Ankylosaurid Ankylosaurus. There’s no way to know how strong it was but they think the force of its tail was up to 4,800 newtons. That is 1,100 pounds of force! That would shatter bones. It’s safe to say they had great offense but the defense was even better. The outside of their body was heavily armored with plates almost like an armadillo. The armor was rigid and had bumps or better explained in National Geographic for example, “This enormous four-legged dinosaur had a squat body covered with bony plates that were studded with spikes.”
It’s crazy to imagine such a dinosaur. It’s even harder to imagine 27 kinds of them! Not all were as big as the Ankylosaurus (measuring 25-35 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 4 feet off the ground) because some of them were small for the dinosaur era and from dinosaurs like that. For example, the Minmi was pretty small with no tail weapon. It did have the armor, maybe not as thick, but it did. (Measurements of an average Minmi size- 8-10 feet long and less than 3 feet tall)
Knowing how interesting and unique these dinosaurs could be, it’s amazing to know some of the fossils people have discovered worldwide. This is a boreapelta, another type of Ankylosaurid and it has one of the most persevered fossils ever! “The approximately five-and-a-half-metre-long specimen was so perfectly preserved that researchers were able to stare into the face of a real dinosaur that lived during a time when North America was a very different place.” Says the article. With this, they have learned many things about the dinosaurs and the area they lived in. They found out with this they had camouflage as said here “Caleb Brown, a curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. “The pigment seemed to be concentrated on the back of the animal and not the belly, and this is consistent with this idea of countershading.” They also weren’t around with well-known dinosaurs like T-rex, but before with not as well-known dinosaurs like Acrocanthosaurus. They mentioned that as well, “The terrifying dinosaur of the day, 110 million years ago, was Acrocanthosaurus, a killing machine that ruled the Cretaceous long before more well-known predators like T-rex arrived on the scene.” They also did some tests to see how damaging the bite from an Acrocanthosaurus after the test they claimed, “In a simulated test, researchers found that Acrocanthosaurus’s bite would have done some serious damage to Borealopelta.” Luckily for the one they found that was not its cause of death, there are many theories but so far it is unknown.
There were many incredible dinosaurs like these and many more undiscovered. People and researchers discover new stuff all the time. They were incredible for their time and now. Is it something worth learning about? That’s for you to decide.
