#osteoderm

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Another sketch brought to you by #paleostream

Minotaurasaurus, one of these heavily armored ankylosaurs.

Ankylosaurs have wonderfully bizarre nasal passages and weird nasal openings which prompted me back in the day of 2012 to speculate about inflatable structures in these guys. Ever since I bring this up once in a while.

[bonusdragons]

June 25, 2024:

Blue Tertiary, Banescale, Keel.

Vysteria of Osteoderm's clan!

[fundinofactoftheday]

Dinofact #52

Uniquely among theropods, Ceratosaurus possessed small, irregular osteoderms (bony lumps, like in ankylosaurs and modern crocodiles) along its body.

Source: wikipedia [1], [2]

[shadyufo]

I’ve been wanting to add some of these cool ancient puzzle pieces to my collection for a while now!

These are fossilized Giant Armadillo Osteoderms! Osteoderms are the bone plates that make up an armadillo’s protective shell. See those little white specks in the last two photos? Those are osteoderms from modern day nine-banded armadillos! 

[romigodon]

Osteoderm on Coprolite

Upper Triassic, Rheatian (208-200 MY)

Unknown Species or Genus

[alphynix]

Do we know if the mekosuchinans had any armour like their semi-aquatic relatives?

I can’t find much information about mekosuchine armor, but since they seem to have been part of Crocodylidae I’d guess they probably had the same sort of body covering as their living relatives. The more fast-running terrestrial ones like Quinkana could potentially have had lighter and less extensive osteoderms, though, similar to some of the sebecosuchians.

(I have seen an anecdotal mention of specimens of Mekosuchus whitehunterensis with spiky neck shields convergently similar to those of aetosaurs, but I’m not sure if anything about it was ever officially published.)

[alphynix]

From all the fossil remains paleontologists get, how does agustinia look? I want to put this sauropode for my website (Extinction), but its still not clear if he got spikes or not; because some scientist believe this animal doensn't got these 'side spikes'

It seems Agustinia probably wasn’t as spiky as it’s often depicted. The fragments that were originally interpreted as spikes were re-examined a few years ago, and seem to actually be broken pieces of rib and hip bones.

Its probably safer to go with a non-spiky version, although its remains are so fragmentary we can’t rule out spiky armor entirely -- it would just be arranged more like what’s known in other titanosaurs.

[chronivore]