Where Did the Stegosaurus Live?

Every toy store you go into has dinosaur action figures and figurines for children. They use them much as if they would use toy soldiers to play out a scene from long ago: dinosaurs battling for dominance and humans running to escape being eaten. Even the motion picture industry has gotten into the game with movies including Jurassic Park.

The stegosaurus lived on Earth about 140 million years ago. The fossil records show that the stegosaurus probably lived in herds with varying ages of dinosaurs. Each brood the stegosaurus had typically had five or six eggs. The young were most probably self-sufficient within a short time of hatching. Some paleontologists suggest that the stegosaurus may have provided for its young much as some modern birds do today.

There have been fossils found in many places in the Northern Hemisphere and in Africa, so this is one answer to where did the stegosaurus live. The majority of skeletal fossils have been found the United States, along the western part of North America, most notably in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. Some fossils have been found in China but haven’t been confirmed or classified. The suggestion is that the stegosaurus preferred flood plains as its habitat due to the plentiful food sources. The regions of North America identified as the location of most of the fossil remains would have been in the flood plains of North America in the Jurassic period.

Many scientists also suggest that the climate and atmosphere of the planet was distinctly different than it is now. There was a much hotter climate, due in part to a type of greenhouse effect. The high level of geothermal emissions and volcanic activity would have contributed to the denser atmosphere. The denser atmosphere with higher oxygen levels from all the plant life would have been responsible for holding in a larger degree of the sun’s radiation. Based on plant fossils found in the same region of North America as the stegosaurus fossils, the area was a sub-tropical forest.

Many other portions of the Northern Hemisphere would have had similar climates. The areas that were close to large bodies of water and on the lower slopes of mountain ranges would have also been ideal as flood plains, and thus an ideal home for the stegosaurus.

The Stegosaurus

Of all the dinosaurs from the past, there are only a few easily identified by everyone. The stegosaurus is one of the ones that most people can identify. The stegosaurus is only one of a family of dinosaurs that had similar characteristics. The name means plated lizard and that is exactly what it looks like.

The stegosaurus was a long lizard with strong back legs and short front legs. Its tail was about as long as its body and ended in a club-like ball with four to eight long spikes. The head was rather small for such a large creature and scientists believe  it was one of the dumbest of dinosaurs due to its small brain.

Along its back ran two rows of large diamond shaped plates, up to thirty inches across. Scientists believe the huge plates along the back were most likely a means of cooling and heating the dinosaur rather than as a means of protection. The huge plates were significantly hollow and probably filled with extensive blood vessels to allow heat to be carried to the plates. They would act much as heating fins do on radiators.

Due to its large size and selective eating habits, it had to spend most of its days eating. The stegosaurus was a strict herbivore and only ate plants. It preferred ferns and conifers that held little nutritional value.

It had a beaked mouth that was used to selectively pick foods from the undergrowth and it was used to snip branches and plant fronds that it found. The spiked tail was probably used for protection from predators. The hindquarters were the only real vulnerable places on the body for attack.