Also known as Euoplocephalus tutus is a plant-eating dinosaur that belonged to the genus of Ankylosaurian dinosaurs.
Key Facts
| Domain | Description |
|---|---|
| Euoplocephalus pronunciation | YOU-oh-plo-SEFF-ah-luss |
| What does Euoplocephalus mean? | The genus name Euoplocephalus is broken down into three, eu which means “well”, hoplo meaning “armed” and kephale which means “head” translating into “well-armored head”. The latter tutus means “safely protected” in Latin. |
| Dinosaur type | Ankylosauria |
| On the menu | Herbivore |
| Length | 5.5 m (18.04 ft) |
| Height | 1.2 m (3.94 ft) |
| Weight | 2500 kg (5 511.6 lbs) |
| Life expectancy | There’s no definite lifespan for this dinosaur but it was assumed to live for around 60 to 70 years like the other Ankylosaurian dinosaurs. |
| Legs used to get around | Quadrupedal |
| Estimated top speed | An adult Euoplocephalus has an estimated top speed of 8 kph. |
| When they lived | Euoplocephalus dinosaurs lived during the Late Cretaceous period which is around 76-70 million years ago. |
| Where they have been found? | Since they are medium-sized dinosaurs, they preferred to stay in areas that had smaller trees and bushes to reach their food source, which were mostly in forests or any dense vegetation that can be found in areas in Canada and USA. |
When & Where
The first ever Euoplocephalus fossil was discovered in Alberta in 1987 by Lawrence Morris Lambe. It was retrieved in the now-known Dinosaur Provincial Park along the valleys of the Red Deer in Alberta, Canada. The fossil was named five years later as “Stereocephalus”; however, they found out that it was already given as a name for a certain insect. It was then changed in 1910 into Euoplocephalus.
Size & Weight
Euoplocephalus size was about 5.5 m in length and 1.2 m in height, making it four times longer than the Asiatic Black Bear which only measures around 1.4 m to 1.7 but is twice as small as the other, measuring 1.5 m to 1.7 m in height. Euoplocephalus weigh about 2 tons or 2 500 kg, which is double the size of the present-day Bison (408 kg to 1 270 kg).
Mobility & Diet
Since these dinosaurs are plant eaters, their diet mostly consists of plants and fruits found in forests and woodlands. Their food source came from small trees and shrubs due to their small height. They consumed their food by utilizing their snout-shaped mouth. Euoplocephalus is known to be a bit friendly and not aggressive at all. They settled in harmony along with the other Sauropod dinosaurs.
Interesting Points
- Euoplocephalus have large spines on their back
- Have a quadrupedal posture, clubbed tail, and armored eyelids
- This is the best-known Ankylosaurian dinosaur since paleontologists were able to recover about 40 complete fossil specimens which include 15 intact skulls and 1 nearly complete skeleton in West America
- It was one of the dinosaurs that were wiped out in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, around 65 million years ago
- In a study by Arbor and Currie in 2013, they stated that Euoplocephalus was a bit different from its close relatives. Compared to other Ankylosaurian dinosaurs, they don’t have round osteoderms at the base of their upper and lower horns. They also lacked external nostrils and a continuous ridge between the thin, scale-like bony horn on the upper side of the skull, behind the ear and above the orbit of the eye.