Ornithischia
Scutellosaurus lawleri
- Ornithischia
- Thyreophora
Ornithischia
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Scutellosaurus is a very early armored dinosaur from the Early Jurassic of Arizona, roughly 196 million years ago. Scutellosaurus was small and lightly built, and unusual among thyreophorans in being primarily bipedal, although its back and flanks were covered by hundreds of small bony scutes. It is (unsurprisingly) usually found to be the most basal armored thyreophoran - the group that would eventually include stegosaurs and ankylosaurs.
The type (and so far only) specimen, MNA V.175, has been restored here - it was found with over 300 individual armor scutes, which aren’t much fun to draw, but presumably made Scutellosaurus less palatable to predatory dinosaurs of its era, like Dilophosaurus.