A living tank
Bony plates grew in its skin all over its back and sides. Even its eyelids were armoured.
The plant-eaters · Plated and armoured dinosaurs
Ankylosaurus
Fused lizard · an-KIE-loh-SORE-us
A wide, low dinosaur armoured with bony plates from head to tail, with a heavy club on the end of its tail.
- Size
- About 6 to 8m long; 5 to 8 tonnes
- Lived
- About 68 to 66 million years ago
- Found in
- Western North America
Trundles after you, club swinging. Move your pointer and see.
To scale
How big was it?
The bars are drawn to the same scale. On these pages the animals are sized in proportion to each other as far as a screen allows: the giants are shrunk a little and the smallest are enlarged, so that you can see them all.
Good to know
Six things about the ankylosaurus
A club that broke bones
The tail club was a mass of solid bone. A swing could have shattered a Tyrannosaurus's leg.
Wider than a car
Its body was very broad and low, which made it almost impossible to tip over.
A complicated nose
Its nasal passages looped about inside its skull, perhaps to warm the air or make it louder.
Rarely found
Only a few partial skeletons are known, and none is complete.
Its weak spot
Its underside had no armour, but a hunter would have had to flip it to get there.
The real thing
Photos of the ankylosaurus
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
What it ate
Low plants: ferns and shrubs, cropped with a wide beak.
How we know
It was named in 1908. Better-preserved relatives from Canada show how the armour was arranged.