Type Species: Gigantspinosaurus sichuanensis
Classification: Dinosauria – Ornithischia – Thyreophora – Stegosauria
Time Period: Late Jurassic
Location: China
Diet: Herbivore
The Chinese stegosaur Gigantspinosaurus lived in the Oxfordian stage of the Late Jurassic. It was small-sized, reaching fourteen feet snout-to-tail and weighing 1500 pounds. It’s distinctive appearance consists of relatively small dorsal plates – a testament to its primitive, basal placement within stegosauria – and extremely large shoulder spines, even larger than those of the later African Kentrosaurus. These shoulder spines were twice the length of the shoulder blades on which they rested. The plates on the neck are small and triangular, and the head would’ve been relatively large with thirty teeth in the lower jaws. Its hips were broad and narrow, its forelimbs were robust, and the low neural spines of the four sacral vertebrae and the first tail vertebra were fused into a single plate. Scutes were discovered among the remains, but their placement on the body is unknown. Skin impressions show rosettes with a central pentagonal or hexagonal scale surrounded by thirteen to fourteen ridged smaller square, pentagonal or hexagonal scales. Gigantspinosaurus was a low browser that likely fed on ferns and cycads.
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