Outline: a typical ankylosaur
Silvisaurus
"forest lizard"
- Lived
- 106 to 101 million years ago, Early Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Length
- about 4 m (13 ft)
- Group
- Ankylosaurs, Nodosauridae
- Found in
- United States
- Named by
- Eaton 1960
Size comparison
To scale
Scale in metersOutline: typical ankylosaur shape
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
105 million years ago
Field notes
About Silvisaurus
What it was like
Silvisaurus was a nodosaur about 4 meters (13 feet) long, an armored plant eater with bony plates on its back and no tail club. Unusually for its group, it still had a few teeth at the front of its upper jaw.
Its world
It lived in the Cretaceous in what is now Kansas, in the United States. Its bones come from the Dakota Formation, rocks laid down in forests and river plains near the shore of a sea.
How it was found
Eaton named Silvisaurus in 1960, from a single find with a skull. It is the only dinosaur named from land rocks in Kansas and is the state's official land fossil.
Close relatives
Other members of Nodosauridae
Sources: WikidataNamed in: T. H. Eaton, Jr. 1960. A new armored dinosaur from the Cretaceous of Kansas. The University of Kansas Paleontological Contributions: Vertebrata 8:1-24