More spikes than plates
The plates along its back give way to pairs of long spikes from the hips to the tail tip.
Jurassic Europe · Plated and armoured dinosaurs
Kentrosaurus
Spike lizard · KEN-troh-SORE-us
A small relative of Stegosaurus with plates on its neck and back, and long spikes on its hips, tail and shoulders.
- Size
- About 4.5m long; 1 tonne
- Lived
- About 152 million years ago
- Found in
- Tanzania
Ambles after you, spikes bristling. 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 kentrosaurus
A spike on each shoulder
A long spike stuck out sideways from each shoulder.
A dangerous tail
Studies suggest it could swing its spiked tail fast enough to pierce bone.
An African stegosaur
It was found by a German expedition to East Africa between 1909 and 1912.
Lost in the war
Many of the bones were destroyed when museums in Germany were bombed.
Half the size of Stegosaurus
It was about half as long as its famous cousin.
The real thing
Photos of the kentrosaurus
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-growing plants.
How we know
More than a thousand bones were collected at Tendaguru in Tanzania.
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