#osteoderms

WIP of a new little project in the works. Painted armadillo skeleton on a wooden plaque framed by real armadillo osteoderms—the tiny bones that make up their protective shell!

Apparently Tumblr is severely allergic to all of my posts with links, so here it is again <3

So here's something I've been planning to make for a while. As a croc enthusiast, something I often see is people being unsure about how the armour on ancient croc groups looked like and, for simplicity, often simply modeling it after their modern relatives. As this is oftentimes not the case, I have started work on a series of guides on what the armour of ancient pseudosuchian groups looked like, with references to illustrate the incredible diversity found in the fossil record. I have recently finished the first part, which deals with the often terrestrial notosuchians (an ironic and random choice I know), which I am happy to present. Below are a few images to give you a sense of what to expect and below that you will find a link that should take you to the download of the PDF file. Further groups will follow, I just need more time to research and work on it.

Download here

So my real question is, other than kentro and gigantspinosaurus, what are other members of stegosauria that we know for CERTAIN, had shoulder spikes?

the answer is, of course, complicated

the problem is that a lot of these things are found disarticulated, IE, not put together in the way they would have been in life - bones scatter about, scavengers move parts, etc.

Early stegosaurs seem to have had them, with some forms like Gigantspinosaurus and Kentrosaurus retaining them; but the osteoderms of Stegosaurs are highly variable - for example, many have the plates lined up with each other, but Stegosaurus itself had them alternating

he’s got bones, lives near some sort of “water”, has a drastically different baby and adult form...