New ankylosaur with a war club-like tail from Chile

[DD1991]

Soto-Acuña, Sergio; Vargas, Alexander O.; Kaluza, Jonatan; Leppe, Marcelo A.; Botelho, Joao F.; Palma-Liberona, José; Simon-Gutstein, Carolina; Fernández, Roy A.; Ortiz, Héctor; Milla, Verónica; Aravena, Bárbara, 2021. Bizarre tail weaponry in a transitional ankylosaur from subantarctic Chile. Nature: 1–5. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-04147-1. ISSN 1476-4687.

 

Links:

This bizarre armored dinosaur had a uniquely bladed tail weapon (nationalgeographic.com)

This Dinosaur Found in Chile Had a Battle Ax for a Tail - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

Stegouros is quite unusual for ankylosaurs in that it had a tail whose armor is reminiscent of war clubs used by the Aztecs and Hawaiians, in sharp contrast to ankylosaurids having tail clubs similar to maces used by medieval knights. Moreover, the authors of the Stegouros paper recover this taxon along with Antarctopelta and Kunbarrasaurus in a distinct ankylosaur clade basal to Nodosauridae and Ankylosauridae, which they named Ankylosauria.