# Ankylosaurus - Source: Wikijunior (en.wikibooks.org), CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikijunior contributors - Reading level: Grades 3 and 4 - Subjects: Dinosaurs, Nature - Topics: ankylosaurus, template, bytes, dinosaurs, time, lived - Length: 438 words, about 3 min - Published: 2025-05-16 - Original: - Page: - Open in Sprouts: ![](https://sprout.rootsofreason.org/media/wikijunior-wikijunior-dinosaurs-ankylosaurus-wikibooks-open-books-for-an-open-wor-93127e92e9.png) A drawing of an Ankylosaurus Ankylosaurus means 'fused lizard' in Greek. It is one of largest members of a group of armoured dinosaurs. The most common species of Ankylosaurus was Ankylosaurus magniventris. Magniventris means great-bellied. ## What did it look like? *Ankylosaurus* was heavily armoured. Its back was covered in thick plates. Also, there were two rows of plates along its back and its tail ended in a big bony club. These features were used as a defense against bigger dinosaurs like *Tyrannosaurus*. Its belly was unprotected, but because *Ankylosaurus* had a row of plates on each side, and was very heavy, it was hard to flip it over. Even its eyelids were made of bone! It weighed 3–4 tons. It was 25–35 feet long and 4 feet tall. ## What did it eat? *Ankylosaurus* was a herbivore. This means it only ate plants, such as fruit and leaves ## When did it live? *Ankylosaurus* lived between 65.5 and 68 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period, and was one of the dinosaurs to survive until the K-T mass extinction. ## Where did it live? *Ankylosaurus* lived in woodland with lots of open spaces and clearings, where lots of plant life could be found. They lived in North America but close relatives lived in Asia. ## How was it discovered? *Ankylosaurus* fossils have been found in the continent of North America. They were named in 1908 by a famous fossil-hunter named Barnum Brown. *Ankylosaurus* footprints have been found in Bolivia, South America. ## What do we need to learn? - Their skin colour. - Did they travel alone, or in herds? NewPP limit report Parsed by mw‐web.codfw.main‐8875b6b85‐wjmfq Cached time: 20260925233201 Cache expiry: 2592000 Reduced expiry: false Complications: \[show‐toc\] CPU time usage: 0.014 seconds Real time usage: 0.027 seconds Preprocessor visited node count: 112/1000000 Revision size: 1779/2097152 bytes Post‐expand include size: 1755/2097152 bytes Template argument size: 161/2097152 bytes Highest expansion depth: 12/100 Expensive parser function count: 0/500 Unstrip recursion depth: 0/20 Unstrip post‐expand size: 0/5000000 bytes Lua time usage: 0.004/10.000 seconds Lua memory usage: 653082/52428800 bytes Number of Wikibase entities loaded: 0/500 Transclusion expansion time report (%,ms,calls,template) 100.00% 18.221 1 Template:WJ\_Dinosaurs 100.00% 18.221 1 -total 87.59% 15.960 1 Template:BookCat 16.94% 3.087 1 Template:BOOKCATEGORY 6.95% 1.266 1 Template:NAIVEBOOKNAME Render ID 4eb5b251-b939-11f1-a37b-ede8cfbba090 Saved in parser cache with key enwikibooks:pcache:91526:\|#\|:idhash:canonical and timestamp 20260925233201 and revision id 4492081. Rendering was triggered because: unknown ## Picture credits - Emily Willoughby (e.deinonychus@gmail.com, http://emilywilloughby.com ), CC BY-SA 3.0 ()