Dacentrurus

What it was like

Dacentrurus was a large stegosaur, among the biggest known from its group, growing to roughly 6 meters (20 feet) long. Like other stegosaurs, it walked on four legs, carried a row of bony plates and spikes along its back and tail, and used the spikes at the tip of its tail as a weapon against attacking predators.

Compared to the later Stegosaurus, its plates were smaller and its build was heavier, and much about its exact appearance is still debated, since complete skeletons of Dacentrurus are rare.

Its world

Dacentrurus lived from about 155 to 143 million years ago, spanning the end of the Late Jurassic and the start of the Early Cretaceous, across what are now Portugal, Spain, and France, with likely finds also reported from the United Kingdom and Wyoming in the United States. Its bones come from formations including the Lourinhã and the Kimmeridge Clay.

It shared its world with large predators such as Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus, and Torvosaurus, the sauropod Camarasaurus, and its close relatives Lusovenator and Zby.

How it was found

Lucas named Dacentrurus in 1902, after an earlier name for the same animal turned out to already belong to a different reptile. The type species is Dacentrurus armatus. About 28 finds are known, more than for many other stegosaurs, and its relatives Kentrosaurus, Wuerhosaurus, and Tuojiangosaurus show that stegosaurs had already spread widely by the Late Jurassic.