Q 01/05

What does the name Stegosaurus mean?

A) Plated lizard

B) Spike lizard

C) Slow lizard

D) Roof lizard

Answer · why

D) Roof lizard

Marsh thought the plates lay flat over the back like roof tiles; only later finds showed they stood on edge.

Q 02/05

Stegosaurus lived during which period?

A) Late Jurassic

B) Late Cretaceous

C) Triassic

D) Early Cretaceous

Answer · why

A) Late Jurassic

About 155 to 145 million years ago, roughly 80 million years before T. rex; the two never met outside cartoons.

Q 03/05

Besides the western United States, Stegosaurus fossils have been found in which European country?

A) Germany

B) England

C) Portugal

D) Spain

Answer · why

C) Portugal

A fragmentary specimen from the Lourinhã Formation was tentatively assigned to S. stenops in 2007.

Q 04/05

What did Stegosaurus most likely eat?

A) Fish and freshwater shellfish

B) Insects and small lizards

C) Low plants such as ferns and cycads

D) The eggs of other dinosaurs

Answer · why

C) Low plants such as ferns and cycads

Its small head and short neck suggest browsing no more than a metre up, unless it could rear on its hind legs as Robert Bakker proposed.

Q 05/05

How many Stegosaurus species are universally recognised from the Morrison Formation?

A) One

B) Six

C) Three

D) Ten

Answer · why

C) Three

S. stenops, S. ungulatus and S. sulcatus; the original type species, S. armatus, turned out to be too fragmentary to use.