If it looks like a stegosaur and walks like a stegosaur ... it must be a stegosaur! Today's dinosaur profile, as befitting the type of cache we have here, is a classic.
Kentrosaurus aethiopicus was discovered in 1909 by a German expedition in Tendaguru, in what was then "German East Africa" - nowadays part of Tanzania (not Ethiopia as implied by the species name). Some 1200 bones were found over four field seasons; tragically, only 350 remain, the rest having been destroyed during an Allied air raid during World War II. However, due to documentation and remaining material, this remains one of the best known stegosaurs anywhere on the planet. It was a decent-sized animal but actually small for a stegosaur - about 15 to 18 feet long. It lived during the Kimmeridgian stage of the Late Jurassic Period, about 150-155 million years ago.
Like many other stegosaurs, Kentrosaurus had (presumably) defensive tail spikes, a structure informally dubbed a "thagomizer". Sound like a joke? It is ...
... and it's such a great word that it's now frequently used in scientific literature. Who says palaeontologists don't have a sense of humor? There are five other stegosaur genera known to have thagomizers: Dacentrurus, Gigantspinosaurus, Hesperosaurus, Miragaia, and of course, the iconic Stegosaurus. Kentrosaurus actually had a unusually rearward center of balance for a four-legged animal - only 10-15% of its weight was supported by its front legs. Perhaps this was intended for quick rotation in order to face the thagomizer at potential threats; with 40 caudal vertebrae, the tail was easily as flexible as that of a modern-day crocodile, and capable of striking at speeds sufficient to maim or outright kill would-be predators such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus.
All stegosaurs were herbivores; Kentrosaurus was likely a low-level browser of non-flowering plants (which likely hadn't evolved at this point), browsing but not heavily chewing vegetation - quite different from the modern grazers we're used to in the modern day. It may have reared up on its hind legs to pull branches from taller trees, though it certainly wouldn't have competed with the numerous long-necked sauropods at Tendaguru: Australodocus, Barosaurus, Dicraeosaurus, Giraffatitan, Janenschia, Tendaguria, and Tornieria. (Imagine THAT safari!)
Kentrosaurus comes from the Greek kentron (meaning "point" or "prickle") and the familiar sauros (meaning "lizard"). There is a very similarly named horned dinosaur, Centrosaurus, derived from the same meaning, but the pronunciation is different, so both generic names remain valid to the present day.
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This one's purely for the numbers. I wish I'd thought of this area first, but proper credit goes to familycachefinders for laying down the original cache near here (this cache placement is slightly different, these dinosaurs need space to breathe!). Cache container is a repurposed black film canister. Plenty of parking across the street.
FTF Prize:
a 2010 Native American $1 Coin - commemorating the Iroquois Confederation (Haudenosaunee "Government - The Great Tree of Peace")
Congratulations to Snick10 on your first FTF!
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