Looking Back at Ankylosaurus

Sometimes one of the best things about writing this blog is that I notice that I somehow missed a famous dinosaur. Ankylosaurus has never appeared on this blog and I can therefore share any article without prefacing it with "we already read this but it is worth reading again" because I have yet to share any of them! Williston and Brown originally described the ankylosauridae with Brown receiving credit for the Ankylosaurus himself even though Williston actually published the description for Barnum Brown. Nearly 100 years later, 95 to be exact, Kenneth Carpenter re-examined and redescribed the Ankylosaurus remains of Brown and the subsequent finds since. Descriptions of the dinosaur are not the only interesting papers that have been posted online. There are also papers on Ankylosaurus forelimbs and the paleoenvironment in which they lived. In a very interesting but not unexpected progression, Carpenter and Coombs combined to discuss systematics of Ankylosaurus and it nearest relatives.