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Interested in a dinosaur with an extremely long tail? Then this dinosaur is for you. It's called the Sauropelta. Covered in bony armor, it has long spines projecting from its neck. All that being said, it is a relatively calm animal when placed in the right environment.

Sauropelta is a genus of nodosaurid dinosaur that originated from Early Cretaceous North America. The earliest known genus of nodosaurid, as well as one of the most well-understood, Sauropelta is unlocked by the Hammond Foundation when players first reach Isla Sorna.

Characteristics

One of the best-understood nodosaurid (thanks to prolific recovery of remains), Sauropelta is easily recognized thanks to the two large spikes that extend from its neck and shoulders and the smaller rows of spines along its neck. It also has a beaked mouth. Due to its large size – measuring eight meters long and weighing around 1.5 tons – Sauropelta cannot run at high speeds, so it relies on being able to defend itself from predators; as well as defensive spikes that can be used to repel attackers, it has thick armor covering most of its body – its name translates to "Lizard Shield". Unlike others of its type, Sauropelta had a flat rather than domed skull. The layout of its back plates limited its neck, shoulder and upper tail movement.

The base genome of Sauropelta has a grey body with dark grey armour running down its back.

Behaviour

Sauropelta is an unsociable animal. It lives in pairs and doesn't like other animals around it. It'll fight with other armored dinosaurs, including other Sauropelta, if the exhibit is too crowded for its liking.

Paleontology

The first Sauropelta fossils were found by Barnum Brown, an American paleontologist known as "Mr. Bones", in 1930. The holotype specimen for Sauropelta was collected as a partial skeleton from the Cloverly Formation in Big Horn County, Montana. Other remains were recovered from nearby locations, and from the Cedar Mountain Formation in Utah. Fossilized footprints have also been found for Sauropelta. However, it wasn't until 1970 that the remains were officially classified as a new genus by fellow paleontologist John Ostrom, after he excavated related fossils from the same location.

Due to the number of recovered Sauropelta specimens, it is one of the best-understood nodosaurids. Like all nodosaurs, it had bony armor running from its head to its tail though Sauropelta also had unique spikes on its neck. These large spikes may have been an adaptation to ward off predators, such as Deinonychus and Acrocanthosaurus.

Paleoecology

Sauropelta existed in western North America during the Early Cretaceous period around 120-95 million years ago, living in the Cloverly Formation, which had wide floodplains around rivers that were covered in forests and flowed into a shallow inland sea. Grasses would not evolve until later in the Cretaceous, so Sauropelta and other Early Cretaceous herbivores diets would consist of ground-level vegetation, such as conifers and cycads. It lived alongside a wide variety of dinosaurs, including the large ornithopod Tenontosaurus, the smaller ornithopod Zephyrosaurus, rare titanosaur sauropods, the dromaeosaurid theropod Deinonychus, and the large theropod Acrocanthosaurus.

The Sauropelta in game can be found in the Morrison Formation, despite the fact that Sauropelta appeared almost 38 million years after the youngest layers of the Morrison, likely a reference to similar dinosaurs found at the Morrison Formation such as Gargoyleosaurus and Mymoorapelta.

Available genomes

Fossil icon Dig site Quality Number available
Ankylosaurusfossilicon
Cedar Mountain Formation
★★★
1
4
Cloverly Formation
★★
★★★
★★★★
1
3
4
4
Morrison Formation ★★
★★★
★★★★
3
4
4

Skins

Trivia

  • Sauropelta was the twenty-first dinosaur to receive a Species Profile on June 1, 2018.[1] Before its official confirmation, Sauropelta was first mentioned in an official tweet.[2]
  • Sauropelta is one of the few dinosaurs in the game with no prior depictions in the franchise's media.
  • Sauropelta is the least social herbivore in the game.
    • Sauropelta also has the lowest maximum population of any dinosaur, well below the maximum of even the Indominus rex.
  • Sauropelta is the fourth largest ankylosaur in the game, after Ankylosaurus, Euoplocephalus, and Nodosaurus.

Gallery

References

  1. Frontier Developments. (June 1, 2018). Species Profile - Sauropelta [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
  2. JW Evolution [@JW_Evolution]. (April 27, 2018). "The Kentrosaurus, much like the Sauropelta, is a beaked Herbivore who can be spotted in Jurassic World Evolution this summer!" [Tweet]. Twitter.

External links

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