Graph explorer

Stegosaurus chirality

We explain that Stegosaurus exhibited exterior chirality and observe that the largest plate in particular of USNM 4394, USNM 4714, DMNS 2818 and NHMUK R36730 appears to have tilted to the right rather than to the left in each case. Several instances in which Stegosaurus specimens have been confused with their distinct, hypothetical mirror-image forms are highlighted. We believe our findings to be consistent with the hypothesis that Stegosaurus's plates acted primarily as display structures. A collection of more than one Stegosaurus might be referred to henceforth as a 'handful' of Stegosaurus.