Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ankylosaurus
/ˌæŋkɪləˈsɔːrəs/noun
A heavily armoured plant-eating dinosaur with a bony club at the end of its tail.
The Greek roots
ἀγκύλος
ankýlos
bent, crooked, stiff
σαῦρος
saûros
lizard
Literally: “fused lizard”
The story of the word
ἀγκύλος means bent or crooked, and medicine uses it for bones that have grown stiffly together, which is what ankylosis of a joint describes. Barnum Brown chose the name in 1908 because the skull bones and armour plates of the animal had fused into a single mass. The tail club, the part every child draws first, is heavy enough that biomechanical models give it the force to break bone.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1908
Same family
ankylosisankylostomiasisdinosaursauropod
In a sentence
Ankylosaurus is built like a coffee table with a mace attached.
Only three good skulls of Ankylosaurus have ever been found.