stegosaur

[ steg-uh-sawr ]

noun
  1. a plant-eating dinosaur of the genus Stegosaurus, from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, having a heavy, bony armor and a row of bony plates along its back, and growing to a length of 20 to 40 feet (6–12 meters).

Origin of stegosaur

1
<New Latin Stegosaurus (1877); see stego-, -saur

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use stegosaur in a sentence

  • He awards a girl named Carolyn with a ribbon for her stegosaurus bodysuit.

  • In some of them such as Stegosaurus the exoskeleton is strongly developed, in others such as Iguanodon it is absent.

    The Vertebrate Skeleton | Sidney H. Reynolds
  • Stegosaurus (plated reptile) takes its name from the double row of bony plates arranged along its back.

    The Elements of Geology | William Harmon Norton
  • This trochanter is absent from the thigh bones of land-inhabiting dinosaurs with short tails, such as Stegosaurus and Triceratops.

    Dinosaurs | William Diller Matthew
  • This attitude is also ascribed to some of the extinct American Dinosaurs, such as the Stegosaurus.

    Mythical Monsters | Charles Gould
  • The limbs of Cetiosaurus, for example, or of Stegosaurus, remind us strikingly of those of elephants.

    Extinct Monsters | H. N. Hutchinson

British Dictionary definitions for stegosaur

stegosaur

stegosaurus (ˌstɛɡəˈsɔːrəs)

/ (ˈstɛɡəˌsɔː) /


noun
  1. any quadrupedal herbivorous ornithischian dinosaur of the suborder Stegosauria, esp any of the genus Stegosaurus, of Jurassic and early Cretaceous times, having an armour of bony plates

Origin of stegosaur

1
C19: from Greek stegos roof + -saur

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for stegosaur

stegosaur

[ stĕgə-sôr′ ]


  1. Any of several large herbivorous ornithischian dinosaurs of the group Stegosauria of the Jurassic and early Cretaceous Periods. The largest genus, Stegosaurus, had a tail with two horizontal spikes for defense, and an arched back with an alternating double row of large, triangular, upright bony plates. Stegosaurs grew over 6 m (20 ft) long, but had extremely small heads with brains the size of a walnut. The hindquarters were controlled by a neural ganglion in the hip region that was larger than the brain.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.