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Stegosaurus
''Stegosaurus'' (; ) is a genus of herbivorous, four-legged, armored dinosaur from the Late Jurassic, characterized by the distinctive kite-shaped upright plates along their backs and spikes on their tails. Fossils of the genus have been found in the western United States and in Portugal, where they are found in Kimmeridgian- to Tithonian-aged strata, dating to between 155 and 145 million years ago. Of the species that have been classified in the upper Morrison Formation of the western US, only three are universally recognized: ''S. stenops'', ''S. ungulatus'' and ''S. sulcatus''. The remains of over 80 individual animals of this genus have been found. ''Stegosaurus'' would have lived alongside dinosaurs such as '' Apatosaurus'', '' Diplodocus'', '' Camarasaurus'' and '' Allosaurus'', the latter of which may have preyed on it. They were large, heavily built, herbivorous quadrupeds with rounded backs, short fore limbs, long hind limbs, and tails held high in the air. Du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stegosauria
Stegosauria is a group of Herbivore, herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs that lived during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous Period (geology), periods. Stegosaurian fossils have been found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere (North America, Europe and Asia), Africa and South America. Their geographical origins are unclear; the earliest unequivocal stegosaurian, ''Bashanosaurus primitivus'', was found in the Bathonian Shaximiao Formation of China. Stegosaurians were armored dinosaurs (thyreophorans). Originally, they did not differ much from more primitive members of that group, being small, low-slung, running animals protected by armored scutes. An early evolutionary innovation was the development of spikes as defensive weapons. Later species, belonging to a subgroup called the Stegosauridae, became larger, and developed long hindlimbs that no longer allowed them to run. This increased the importance of active defence by the thagomizer, which could ward off even large predators becau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thagomizer
A thagomizer () is the distinctive arrangement of spike-shaped osteoderms on the tails of some stegosaurian dinosaurs. These spikes are believed to have been a defensive measure against predators. The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name. Cartoonist Gary Larson invented the name "thagomizer" in 1982 as a joke in his comic strip ''The Far Side'', and it was gradually adopted as an informal term sometimes used within scientific circles, research, and education. Etymology The term ''thagomizer'' was coined by Gary Larson in jest. In a 1982 ''The Far Side'' comic, a group of cavemen are taught by a caveman lecturer that the spikes on a stegosaur's tail were named "after the late Thag Simmons". The term was picked up initially by Kenneth Carpenter, then a paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, who used the term when describing a fossil at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual Meeting in 1993. ''Thagomizer'' has since been adopted as an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allosaurus
''Allosaurus'' ( ) is an extinct genus of theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 145 million years ago during the Late Jurassic period ( Kimmeridgian to late Tithonian ages). The first fossil remains that could definitively be ascribed to this genus were described in 1877 by Othniel C. Marsh. The name "''Allosaurus''" means "different lizard", alluding to its lightweight , which Marsh believed were unique. The genus has a very complicated taxonomy and includes at least three valid species, the best known of which is ''A. fragilis''. The bulk of ''Allosaurus'' remains come from North America's Morrison Formation, with material also known from the Alcobaça Formation and Lourinhã Formation in Portugal. It was known for over half of the 20th century as '' Antrodemus'', but a study of the abundant remains from the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry returned the name "''Allosaurus''" to prominence. As one of the first well-known theropod dinosaurs, it has long attracted attention ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armored Dinosaur
Thyreophora ("shield bearers", often known simply as "armored dinosaurs") is a group of armored ornithischian dinosaurs that lived from the Early Jurassic until the end of the Cretaceous. Thyreophorans are characterized by the presence of body armor lined up in longitudinal rows along the body. Primitive forms had simple, low, keeled scutes or osteoderms, whereas more derived forms developed more elaborate structures including spikes and plates. Most thyreophorans were herbivorous and had relatively small brains for their body size. Thyreophora includes two major subgroups, Ankylosauria and Stegosauria. In both clades, the forelimbs were much shorter than the hindlimbs, particularly in stegosaurs. Thyreophora has been defined as the group consisting of all species more closely related to ''Ankylosaurus'' and ''Stegosaurus'' than to ''Iguanodon'' and ''Triceratops''. It is the sister group of Cerapoda within Genasauria. Characteristics Members of Thyreophora are characterise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hypsirhophus
''Hypsirhophus'' (meaning "high roof"; often misspelled "''Hypsirophus''") is a genus of stegosaurian dinosaurs. It contains a single species, ''Hypsirhophus discurus'', which is known only from a fragmentary specimen. The fossil consists of partial vertebrae from the back, three from the tail, and a piece of rib. History and classification The first described fossils of ''Hypsirhophus discurus'' were unearthed by schoolteacher Oramel William Lucas who working for Edward Drinker Cope at Cope's Quarry 3 near "Cope's Nipple" at Garden Park, a fossil site 3.8 miles northeast of Canon City, Colorado, and came from the Tithonian strata of the Upper Jurassic. The fossils now accepted as ''Hypsirhophus'' were fragmentary and came from one individual, containing: a dorsal vertebra, 2 partial neural spines, 2 caudal vertebral centra, and a rib fragment. These fossils were then sent to Cope, who briefly described them in 1878 as part of the Bone Wars, a competition between Cope and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morrison, Colorado
Morrison is a home rule municipality in Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. The population was 396 at the 2020 census. History This small foothills settlement is named after George Morrison (April 16, 1822 – June 11, 1895), a builder and businessman who left a mark not only on the town that now bears his name, but on the history of the area. A stonemason who immigrated from Canada to the Mt. Vernon area in 1859, he helped found the town of Mt. Vernon and built the Mt. Vernon House, seat of the territorial government under Robert Steele, and an important stop for travelers on the Mt. Vernon Toll Road from Denver to the goldfields of the Rocky Mountains. He became a U.S. citizen on May 22, 1862.Brown, Georgina. 1976. ''Shining Mountains''. Library of Congress catalog # 75-41547, 248 p. (Index compiled by Ginna C. Snyder, Foothills Genealogical Society of Colorado, Inc., 1985.) George Morrison later moved south to Bear Creek, where he founded the Morrison Stone, Lime, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History Museum, London
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum (London), Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a ''cathedral of nature''—both exemplified by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diplodocus
''Diplodocus'' (, , or ) is an extinct genus of diplodocid sauropod dinosaurs known from the Late Jurassic of North America. The first fossils of ''Diplodocus'' were discovered in 1877 by S. W. Williston. The generic name, coined by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1878, is a Neo-Latin term derived from Greek διπλός (''diplos'') "double" and δοκός (''dokos'') "beam", in reference to the double-beamed chevron bones located in the underside of the tail, which were then considered unique. The genus of dinosaurs lived in what is now mid-western North America, at the end of the Jurassic period. It is one of the more common dinosaur fossils found in the middle to upper Morrison Formation, with most specimens being found in rocks between about 151.88 and 149.1 million years ago , during the latest Kimmeridgian Age, although it may have made it into the Tithonian., with at least one specimen (AMNH FR 223) being potentially from among the youngest deposits of the formation. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morrison Formation
The Morrison Formation is a distinctive sequence of Upper Jurassic sedimentary rock found in the western United States which has been the most fertile source of dinosaur fossils in North America. It is composed of mudstone, sandstone, siltstone, and limestone and is light gray, greenish gray, or red. Most of the fossils occur in the green siltstone beds and lower sandstones, relics of the rivers and floodplains of the Jurassic period. It is centered in Wyoming and Colorado, with outcrops in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. Equivalent rocks under different names are found in Canada. It covers an area of 1.5 million square kilometers (600,000 square miles), although only a tiny fraction is exposed and accessible to geologists and paleontologists. Over 75% is still buried under the prairie to the east, and much of its western paleogeographic extent was eroded during exhuma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apatosaurus
''Apatosaurus'' (; meaning "deceptive lizard") is a genus of herbivorous sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Othniel Charles Marsh described and named the first-known species, ''A. ajax'', in 1877, and a second species, ''A. louisae'', was discovered and named by William H. Holland in 1916. ''Apatosaurus'' lived about 152 to 151 million years ago (mya), during the late Kimmeridgian to early Tithonian age, and are now known from fossils in the Morrison Formation of modern-day Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah in the United States. ''Apatosaurus'' had an average length of , and an average mass of . A few specimens indicate a maximum length of 11–30% greater than average and a mass of approximately . The cervical vertebrae of ''Apatosaurus'' are less elongated and more heavily constructed than those of '' Diplodocus'', a diplodocid like ''Apatosaurus'', and the bones of the leg are much stockier despite being longer, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bone Wars
The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale). Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and the destruction of bones. Each scientist also sought to ruin his rival's reputation and cut off his funding, using attacks in scientific publications. Their search for fossils led them west to rich bone beds in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. From 1877 to 1892, both paleontologists used their wealth and influence to finance their own expeditions and to procure services and dinosaur bones from fossil hunters. By the end of the Bone Wars, both men had exhausted their funds in the pursuit of pale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camarasaurus
''Camarasaurus'' ( ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic period. Its fossil remains have been found in the Morrison Formation, dating to the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages of the Jurassic, between 155 and 145 million years ago (mya). ''Camarasaurus'' presented a distinctive cranial profile of a blunt snout and an arched skull that was remarkably square, typical of basal macronarians. The generic name means "chambered lizard", referring to the hollow chambers, known as pleurocoels, in its cervical vertebrae (Greek (') meaning "vaulted chamber", or anything with an arched cover, and (') meaning "lizard"). ''Camarasaurus'' contains four species that are commonly recognized as valid: '' Camarasaurus grandis'', '' Camarasaurus lentus'', '' Camarasaurus lewisi'', and '' Camarasaurus supremus''. ''C. supremus'', the type species, is the largest and geologically youngest of the four. ''Camarasaurus'' is the type genus of Camaras ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
