Dino card No. 1182 of 2,015

Miragaia

Say it: mee-rah-GUY-ah

Name means: “wonderful goddess of the Earth”1

Ate: PlantsPlated dinosLate Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Miragaia was a stegosaur, a plant-eating dinosaur with plates and spines on its back. It had an unusually long neck, much longer than most other stegosaurs. This gentle giant lived in what is now Portugal and the United States during the Late Jurassic period.1 2

Lived

155 to 121 million years ago3

Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Portugal (Lourinhã Formation) and the United States (Morrison Formation in Utah and Wyoming)1 2

Food

Plants3

Length

5.5 to 6.5 m1

estimate based on incomplete skeleton

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Miragaia had at least 17 neck vertebrae, giving it a very long neck for a stegosaur. Most stegosaurs had fewer than 13.1

The name Miragaia comes from the village where it was found, Miragaia in Portugal, and also means 'wonderful goddess of the Earth'.1

Miragaia belonged to a group called Dacentrurinae, which includes its close relative Dacentrurus. Scientists used to think many stegosaur fossils from Portugal and Spain were Dacentrurus, but now they know some are Miragaia.1

A nearly complete skeleton of Miragaia was discovered in 1959 in Atouguia da Baleia, Peniche, Portugal, but it was not described until many years later.1

Miragaia shared features with a stegosaur from Wyoming called Alcovasaurus longispinus, suggesting that a land bridge once connected North America and Iberia (Portugal and Spain).1

The plates on Miragaia's back were probably used for display, and the spines on its tail (called a thagomizer) could have been a weapon against predators.1

AI-made picture of Miragaia — An AI-made picture of how Miragaia might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

Myth buster

Myth: Miragaia is sometimes thought to be a species of Dacentrurus.

Truth: Scientists now agree that Miragaia is a separate, valid genus, different from Dacentrurus in many ways, such as its longer neck and different vertebrae.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Miragaia
Named by: Mateus et al. 20093
Group: Plated dinos
Family / clade: Stegosauridae3
Classification: Ornithischia > Stegosauria > Thyreophora3
Age of the rocks: 155 to 121 million years (Kimmeridgian to Barremian)3
Rock formations: Morrison3
Countries: USA3
Fossil records: 31 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Miragaia was named in 2009 by Octávio Mateus and colleagues, based on a partial skeleton found near the village of Miragaia in the Lourinhã Formation of Portugal. The holotype specimen includes much of the front half of the skeleton.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate exactly how many species of Miragaia existed, and whether some fossils from North America belong to this genus or to its close relative Dacentrurus.2

Where the facts come from

Dacentrurine stegosaurs (Dinosauria): A new specimen of Miragaia longicollum from the Late Jurassic of Portugal resolves taxonomical validity and shows the occurrence of the clade in North America (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Dacentrurine Stegosaurs in North America: New Occurrences from the Upper Jurassic of USA (Morrison Formation) (dinodata.de)
Miragaia in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.