Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogelbaum here, it's hard to read anything about
Speaker 1: dinosaurs without bringing along preconceived notions of what the creatures
Speaker 1: might have looked or acted like. Most people have either
Speaker 1: read books as children or watched television or movies that
Speaker 1: depicted dinosaurs as massive and monstrous creatures seeking to destroy
Speaker 1: or devour anything in their path. Some of those animals,
Speaker 1: like Tyrannosaurus, were huge predators, but not all dinosaurs fit
Speaker 1: that bill. Enter the anchylosaur. This four legged dino was
Speaker 1: certainly big. The largest anchylosaurus ever found was over twenty
Speaker 1: ft or six meters long and weighed around four tons.
Speaker 1: But and Kylosaurus was an herbivore plant eating tank of
Speaker 1: an animal, and we do mean tank. The Ankylosaurus was
Speaker 1: covered with thick bony plates, a defense that came in
Speaker 1: handy for this hefty herbivore and lented name and Kylosaurus
Speaker 1: means fused lizard in Greek. The bony plates were fused
Speaker 1: to the dinosaurs skull and other body parts, making it
Speaker 1: extremely sturdy. We spoke via email with Dr Hans Seuss,
Speaker 1: the senior research geologist and curator of Fossil Vertebrates in
Speaker 1: the Department of Paleobiology at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum
Speaker 1: of Natural History in Washington, d C. He said the
Speaker 1: first line of defense was their outer armor, composed of
Speaker 1: bony plates. In fact, and kylosaurs were so heavily armored
Speaker 1: that even their upper eyelid was protected by a bony plate.
Speaker 1: One group of encylosaurs had massive clubs of bone at
Speaker 1: the end of their tails, and they could swing their
Speaker 1: tails to inflict massive damage on the legs of an
Speaker 1: attacking predator. The Nkylosaurus's body was thick and squat, its
Speaker 1: legs sturdy. It had a broad, triangular shaped skull, but
Speaker 1: it was the armor that made the difference. Hard plates
Speaker 1: covered with bony spikes jutting from its flanks and bony
Speaker 1: knobs called osteoderms or scutes retreating from its back. Horn
Speaker 1: proturbances stood out above each eye and on the sides
Speaker 1: of the face. Not all in kylosaurs had the same
Speaker 1: armor patterning, but all had armor to protect them from predators,
Speaker 1: most notably Tyrannosaurus and the like. And kylosaurs needed that
Speaker 1: protection because they spent most of the day eating massive
Speaker 1: amounts of food, stripping leaves from low lying plants. Sus
Speaker 1: said they have small teeth similar to those of present
Speaker 1: day plant eating lizards. An amazing discovery of a nearly
Speaker 1: perfect ankylosaur skeleton from Alberta in Canada preserved gut contents
Speaker 1: that confirmed that ankylosaurs ate plants. However, Sus also shared
Speaker 1: a startling discovery. He said one small boned anchylosaur recently
Speaker 1: discovered in northern China apparently went into lakes and even
Speaker 1: ate small fish. The first ankylosaur fossil was discovered by
Speaker 1: barn and Brown and the Hell Creek Formation in Montana
Speaker 1: in nineteen o six, but in kylosaurs have been found
Speaker 1: in many places throughout the world, including Europe, Antarctica, Asia, Australia,
Speaker 1: and North and South America. SEUs said. In fact, one
Speaker 1: of the first dinosaurs ever to be discovered was it
Speaker 1: anchylosaur from southern England, discovered in eighteen thirty one, and
Speaker 1: kylosaurs had a complex nasal system that included a large
Speaker 1: cavity volume for the region of the brain that handles
Speaker 1: the sense of smell. Study in the Journal of Anatomy
Speaker 1: suggested that ankylosaurs may have had a highly developed sense
Speaker 1: of smell in order to find food and avoid predators.
Speaker 1: We don't know whether or not in kylosaurs were social
Speaker 1: as adults, so whether they moved in herds. According to SEUs,
Speaker 1: there's simply no evidence one way or the other. Though
Speaker 1: he said that a group of very young and kylosaurs
Speaker 1: were discovered in the Gobi Desert, and though in Kylosaur's
Speaker 1: armor and body type might bring to mind thoughts of
Speaker 1: alligators and crocodiles, SEUs says they're not related. Birds are
Speaker 1: still the closest living relatives of all dinosaurs. Interestingly, and
Speaker 1: Kylosaurus was estimated to have lived between sixty six point
Speaker 1: eight million to sixty five point five million years ago
Speaker 1: in North America during the Late Cretaceous period, which means
Speaker 1: and kylosaurs were among the last dinosaurs roaming the earth.
Speaker 1: According to the U S Geological Survey, denosaurs went extinct
Speaker 1: about sixty five billion years ago at the end of
Speaker 1: the Cretaceous period. One fascinating and kylosaur discovery in in
Speaker 1: Montana's Judith River Formation, for a striking and spiky resemblance
Speaker 1: to the mythical monster zul from the movie Ghostbusters. You
Speaker 1: know there is no data, only zul the terror dogs
Speaker 1: that Dana and Lewis turn into. The paleontologists who made
Speaker 1: the discovery were so struck by the similarity between the
Speaker 1: recovered skull and the movie monster that they named the
Speaker 1: specimen zul care vastatur, which means destroyer of shins in
Speaker 1: Latin and refers to then kylosaurs club like leg crushing tail.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patty Rescus and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. For more in this and lots of other
Speaker 1: topics that were very big and Samaria, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I
Speaker 1: heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.