Kentrosaurus Characteristics

Kentrosaurus measured up to 17 feet (5 metres) in length and weighed around 2 tons. The skull of Kentrosaurus was long and narrow and although this dinosaur was quite large, it had a very small, but long brain. The olfactory bulbs were well developed and this is the part of the brain that gave the dinosaur a very good sense of smell. It had a toothless beak and small cheek teeth. Kentrosaurus was a quadrupedal dinosaur, but may have been able to rear up on its hind legs to reach twigs and leaves as its hind legs were longer than its front legs. Kentrosaurus was a very slow and inactive dinosaur.

Kentrosaurus armour was quite different from that of the Stegosaurus. The double row of bony plates along its neck and shoulders were small, however, the spikes along its back and tail were larger and measured around 2 feet in length. There was a pair of spikes protruding backwards from the shoulders. The use of these spikes may have been purely for self defence, however, Stegosaurus may have used its plates for temperature regulation, although this may have also been the case for Kentrosaurus as the plates contained blood vessels. Kentrosaurus had hoof-like claws on its feet and carried its head close to the ground.

As with all ornithopods, Kentrosaurus was a herbivore. It was generally a low level browser who would have eaten foliage and low growing fruit from various non-flowering plants. Kentrosaurus, like other Stegosaurians, may have lived in herds. Kentrosaurus was a stegosaurian (stegosaur), whose intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was low among the dinosaurs.

Kentrosaurus may have been preyed upon to large carnivores such as Allosaurus. Kentrosaurus would have used its spiked tail to protect itself by swinging it from side to side to ward off the attacker. The tail had at least 40 caudal vertebrae and would have been able to flex as much as tails of modern crocodiles. It could have swung its tail at a speed of 50 kilometres per hour.

Kentrosaurus fossils have been found only in the Tendaguru Formation of Tanzania, dated to the Kimmeridgian stage.

Kentrosaurus was described by German paleontologist Edwin Hennig in 1915.