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Stegosaurus Plate

Stegosaurus Plate

This specimen is a fragment of Stegosaurus plate, recovered from the Skull Creek Quarry in Colorado. This private quarry is part of the Morrison Formation. Specimens from this location date to the late Jurassic Period roughly 150,000,000 years ago.

Armored with twin rows of bony-cored plates and sharp tail spikes, Stegosaurus is one of the best known of all dinosaurs.


The plates and spikes of Stegosaurus are called osteoderms, bony deposits that form in the skin rather than growing as extensions of the skeleton. Lacking an anchor to the skeleton, some scientists believe that Stegosaurus's plates would provide limited mechanical protection. The current scientific thinking leans towards temperature regulation as the primary function.

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