A medieval knight of the dinosaur world — armored in bony bumps and swinging a bone club tail.
Like a medieval knight, Pinacosaurus wore armor and carried a club for protection. For armor, Pinacosaurus had bony bumps all over its body, like all of its ankylosaur relatives. Its club consisted of two heavy lumps of bone attached to the end of the dinosaur's powerful tail.
This was probably a common scene during the Cretaceous period. It shows a meat-eating dinosaur rearing over its prey, a well-armored ankylosaur. Ankylosaurs crouched on the ground to protect their soft bellies, and depended on their skin armor and spines for defense.
Many dinosaurs used their tails in battle. Pinacosaurus's tail was a powerful weapon that it could swing at its attackers.
Pinacosaurus was not the only dinosaur with body armor. All ankylosaurs had bony plates embedded in their skins, forming lumps and bumps. Polacanthus, shown here, is another typical ankylosaur.
Armored dinosaurs that lived in the late Cretaceous period, like Pinacosaurus and Euoplocephalus, are found only in eastern Asia, western North America and Australia. This suggests that in the late Cretaceous period dinosaurs could cross from western North America to eastern Asia and Australia by a land "bridge," but could not move into other parts of the world because of the spreading seas.
Ankylosaurs like Pinacosaurus had small, triangular teeth like the tooth shown here. Teeth that look like this are made for chewing soft plants like ferns.
Source: Microsoft Dinosaurs (1993) CD-ROM. Text liberated from original screen art; images & audio restored from disc. Original media is Microsoft/supplier copyright — non-commercial educational preservation. Credits & Acknowledgements