Dino card No. 1582 of 2,015

Sauropelta

Say it: SOR-oh-PEL-tah

Name means: “lizard shield”1

Ate: PlantsArmoured dinosEarly Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous

Sauropelta was an armoured dinosaur that looked like a walking tank. It had huge spikes on its neck and a long tail that made up half its body length. This plant-eater lived in North America during the Early Cretaceous period.2 1

Lived

121 to 94 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Wyoming, Montana, and possibly Utah, USA2 3

Food

Plants2 3

Length

5.2 to 6 m2

Weight

1.5 tonnes to 2 tonnes2

Artist's life restoration of Sauropelta — How Sauropelta may have looked, by Emily Willoughby. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Sauropelta had two rows of large, pointed spines on each side of its neck. The spines pointed backwards and upwards, and their bases were fused together, which limited neck movement.2

Its body was covered in bony armor, including small nodules and larger conical scutes. Over the hips, the armor plates locked together tightly to form a 'sacral shield'.2

Sauropelta is one of the earliest known nodosaurids. Most of its fossils come from rocks that are about 108.5 million years old.2

The first Sauropelta fossils were collected by famous dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown in the 1930s. But the dinosaur was not named until 1970, when John Ostrom gave it the name Sauropelta.2

Sauropelta lived in forested floodplains near rivers. It ate conifers and cycads, since grasses had not yet evolved.2

A nearly complete skeleton with its armor still in place is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.2

Myth buster

Myth: Sauropelta had a tail club like some other armoured dinosaurs.

Truth: Sauropelta was a nodosaurid, and nodosaurids did not have tail clubs. Instead, its tail had flat triangular plates pointing outwards.2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Sauropelta
Named by: Ostrom 19703
Group: Armoured dinos
Family / clade: Nodosauridae3
Classification: Ornithischia > Ankylosauria > Nodosauridae > Thyreophora3
Age of the rocks: 121 to 94 million years (Aptian to Cenomanian)3
Rock formations: Cloverly, Cedar Mountain, Wayan3
Countries: USA3
Fossil records: 34 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Barnum Brown collected the first fossils in the 1930s from Montana, USA. John Ostrom named the dinosaur Sauropelta in 1970, using specimens from both Brown's and his own expeditions.2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure if some large nodosaurid fossils from Utah belong to Sauropelta or to a different, unnamed species.2

Where the facts come from

Sauropelta | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
Sauropelta (en.wikipedia.org)
Sauropelta 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.