Covered in armor and weighing up to 13,000 lbs., Ankylosaurus was the tank of the dinosaur world. It’s name means “fused lizard”, because the bones in its skull and many other areas are fused together, making this dinosaur that much tougher and harder. Add a tail club for good measure, and you’ve got a creature that most predators would think twice about messing with!
Ankylosaurus was first discovered in 1906 by Barnum Brown in Montana. Based on these incomplete remains, Brown created a reconstruction that lacked the characteristic tail club, and also had its osteoderms (armor plates) arranged in near parallel rows. Future specimens would reveal the tail club and more osteoderms of varied shapes and sizes - it was not formally described in full until Kenneth Carpenter undertook the task in 2004.
