Stygimoloch
Stygimoloch was a plant-eating dinosaur that had bony spikes and knobs on its skull. This bipedal dinosaur lived during the late Cretaceous period, about 70 million to 66 million years ago.
| Stygimoloch Temporal range: Upper Cretaceous
70–66 mya | |
|---|---|
| |
| Reconstructed skull at the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | †Ornithischia |
| Suborder: | †Pachycephalosauria |
| Family: | †Pachycephalosauridae |
| Genus: | †Stygimoloch Galton & Sues, 1983 |
| Species: | †S. spinifer
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| Binomial name | |
| Stygimoloch spinifer Galton & Sues, 1983
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| Synonyms | |
Like other pachycephalosaurids, Stygimoloch was a bipedal herbivore with an extremely thick skull roof. It had long hindlimbs and small forelimbs. Stygimoloch probably head-butted as a defense and in rivalry.
22% of all domes examined had lesions suggesting osteomyelitis. This is an infection of the bone resulting from trauma. So pachycephalosaurid domes were probably used in intra-species combat.[1]
Stygimoloch fossils were first discovered in North America, in Montana and Wisconsin. The first was discovered in Hell Creek, Montana and was named in 1983 by Peter M. Galton, a British paleontologist and Hans-Dieter Sues, a German paleontologist.
References
change- ↑ Peterson, JE; Dischler, C; Longrich, NR (2013). "Distributions of cranial pathologies provide evidence for head-butting in dome-headed dinosaurs (Pachycephalosauridae)". PLOS ONE. 8 (7): e68620. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...868620P. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0068620. PMC 3712952. PMID 23874691.
