Dino profile

Ankylosaurus

the armored dinosaur with a club tail

Ankylosaurus was a big dinosaur that ate plants. Its back was covered in bony armor, and its tail ended in a heavy club.

Ankylosaurus: stocky sand-colored dino covered in plates, with a club tail, in front of a lava glow.

Its ID card

Its name: “Fused lizard”: many of its bones, in its skull and body, were fused together. [1][2]
When: At the very end of the Cretaceous, about 70 to 66 million years ago. [1][2]
Where: In North America: in the United States (Montana, Wyoming) and in Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan). [1][2]
Its size: About 6 to 8 meters long: probably the biggest in its family. [1][2]
Its weight: Between about 4.8 and 8 tonnes, according to scientists' estimates. [1][2]
What it ate: Low plants: ferns, shrubs, fruit, and maybe roots. [1][2]
Its family: The ankylosaurids, armored dinosaurs that walked on four legs. [1]

A big plant eater

It had a beak at the front of its mouth and very small teeth for grinding plants. [1][2]

It probably needed about 60 kilos of plants a day. [1]

Some scientists think it maybe dug the ground with its front legs to find food. [1][2]

Most of the time, it probably moved slowly. But it could maybe go faster when it needed to. [1]

Armor and a club

Its body was covered in bony bumps and plates. The smallest were about 1 cm, the biggest more than 35 cm. Nobody knows yet exactly how they were arranged on its back. [1][2]

Its skull was wide and low, with two small horns pointing backward, and two more just below them. [2]

At the end of its tail, it had a big bony club. It probably couldn't lift it very high, but it could swing it hard from left to right. [1]

It probably used it to defend itself against big predators. Maybe also in fights between Ankylosaurus: scientists don't know yet. [1][2]

Its discovery

In 1906, an American Museum of Natural History expedition, led by Barnum Brown, finds the first bones in Montana, in the United States. It is Peter Kaisen who spots the skeleton. [1][2]

In 1908, Barnum Brown gives it its name. A few years earlier, he had led the discovery of Tyrannosaurus. [1][2]

Its famous club is only found in 1910, in Canada, near the Red Deer River, in Alberta. [1][2]

Even today, no complete Ankylosaurus skeleton has ever been found. [1][2]

Volcano Planet: red sky, a volcano with rivers of lava, flying embers, dark rock cracked with lava, a lava pool, big blocks, the Ankylosaurus, Tommy and Cosmo.

In Dino Cosmos

5 Volcano Planet

★ smash

Power forever. Its club tail smashes big blocks.

Sources

The information on this page comes from these sources:

Ankylosaurus, Dino Directory, Natural History Museum, London (accessed November 5, 2026).
Ankylosaurus, Wikipedia (English), and the publications it cites: Brown 1908, Carpenter 2004, Arbour & Mallon 2017 (accessed November 5, 2026).

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