The Prehistoric Park Animal Field Guide Volume 1

by WildExpert24

As a Prehistoric Park employee, you get the privilege to work with the likes of previously extinct animals. However, if you want to survive longer than five minutes, then you need to have knowledge of its inhabitants. From the world of Cartoon's Prehistoric Park, this Guide will give you info on behavior, diet, lifespan, and more. Welcome to the Ultimate Prehistoric Guidebook.

38. Denversaurus

Denversaurus

Scientific Classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Clade: Dinosauria

Clade: Ornithischia

Clade: Thyreophora

Suborder: Ankylosauria

Family: Nodosauridae

Subfamily: Nodosaurinae

Clade: Panoplosaurini

Genus: Denversaurus

Type Species: Denversaurus schlessmani meaning "Denver lizard."

Described by Robert Thomas Bakker, 1988

Genus Synonyms:

-Edmontonia schlessmani, Kenneth Carpenter, 1990

Current Park Population: (6; all adults; 2 male, 4 female)

Park Diet: Ferns, cow feed, cycads, magnolia flowers, horse feed, water plants, and rhinoceros feed.

Natural Diet: Ferns, low shrubs, cycads, and small insects and grubs.

Lifespan: 45 years.

Habitat: Open areas like floodplain swamps, fern prairies, and open-canopy forests with large amounts of food.

Native Ecosystem: Western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Hell Creek Formation, Lance Formation, Denver, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, and Wyoming, USA, 68-66 Million Years Ago, Maastrichtian Stage.

Breeding Season: April-August.

Gestation Period: Four-Five Months.

Eggs Laid: Five-Twelve Eggs

Hatching Time: Four-Six Weeks

Danger Level: 6 out of 10.

Summary: Ankylosaurus wasn't the only armored dinosaur of Hell Creek. Denversaurus represents the last surviving member of a family called the Nodosauridae. Nodosaurids lack the tail club that is iconic to the larger Ankylosaurus. Regardless, Denversaurus is still heavily armored. Denversaurus possesses a surprisingly powerful sense of smell, almost on par with that of Tyrannosaurus. This is used to seek out the herbivore's favored food items, compensating for its relatively poor sight and hearing.

Discovery and Naming: In 1922, Philip Reinheimer, a collector and technician employed by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, the predecessor of the present Denver Museum of Nature and Science, near the Twito Ranch in Corson County, South Dakota discovered the fossil of an ankylosaurian in a Maastrichtian age terrestrial horizon of the Lance Formation. In 1943, American paleontologist Barnum Brown referred the find to Edmontonia longiceps.

In 1988, Robert Thomas Bakker decided to split the genus Edmontonia. The species Edmontonia rugosidens he made into a separate genus Chassternbergia and the Denver fossil was named and described as a new genus and species. The type species of this genus was Denversaurus schlessmani. The generic name refers to the Denver Museum of Natural History in Denver, Colorado. The specific name honored Lee E. Schlessman, a major benefactor of the museum and the founder of the Schlessman Family Foundation.

The fossil the species is based on, the holotype DMNH 468, was discovered in a layer of the late Maastrichtian-age Lance Formation of South Dakota. It consists of a skull, lacking the lower jaws, and many osteoderms of the body armor. It is part of the collection of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science after which the genus was named. Bakker referred a second fossil to the species, specimen AMNH 3076, a skull found by Brown and American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Roland T. Bird at the Tornillo Creek in Brewster County, Texas, in a layer of the poorly dated Upper Cretaceous Aguja Formation, possibly from the Maastrichtian also.

Fossil hunters found a nodosaurid skeleton in Niobrara County, Wyoming, nicknamed "Tank", which has been identified as Denversaurus. The specimen contains the lower jaws, parts of the torso, and about a hundred osteoderms. It is part of the collection of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center under inventory number BHI 127327.

The validity of Denversaurus was disputed in a 1990 paper on ankylosaurian systematics by Kenneth Carpenter, who noted that Bakker's diagnosis of Denversaurus was based primarily on Bakker's artistic restoration of the holotype in an uncrushed state. Since DMNH 468 was found crushed, Carpenter assigned Denversaurus to an Edmontonia sp., even though he noted its similarity to Edmontonia rugosidens. Several workers treated Denversaurus as synonymous with either E. rugosidens or E. longiceps, or a valid species of Edmontonia, an Edmontonia schlessmani.

Although at one point treated as a junior synonym of Edmontonia by some taxonomists, current research indicates that it is a distinct nodosaurid genus.

In an SVP 2015 abstract, Michael Burns revisited the systematics of the latest Cretaceous nodosaurids from the Western Interior. According to Burns, Denversaurus is a valid taxon based on its phylogenetic position.

Description: In 2010, American paleontologist Gregory S. Paul estimated the length of Denversaurus at 6 meters (20 feet long)and its body mass at 3 tonnes (3.3 short tons). They lacked a club of the more famous relative, Ankylosaurus, and their pale colored black tipped armor was less elaborate – they were also more reddish-brown in color grading to a lighter grayish brown on the flanks, tail, legs, and head, had narrower muzzles and long shoulder spikes which were black-tipped. Its body is covered in bony osteoderms including a pair of large, forward-facing spines on its shoulders.

American paleontologist Robert T. Bakker considered Denversaurus distinct from Edmontonia and Chassternbergia in having a skull that was wide at the rear and a more rearward position of the eye sockets. The holotype skull has a length of 496 millimeters and a rear width of 346 millimeters. In the referred specimen AMNH 3076 these proportions are less extreme, measuring 395 millimeters long with a rear width of 220 millimeters. According to American paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter, the greater width of both the holotype and the referred specimen was due to crushing.

Vertebrate anatomist and paleontologist Michael Burns 2015 published an abstract that concluded that Denversaurus was different from Edmontonia but similar to Panoplosaurus in having inflated, convex, cranial sculpturing with visible sulci, or troughs, between individual top skull armor elements, but is distinct from Panoplosaurus in having a relatively wider snout.

Classification: Bakker in 1988 placed Denversaurus within an Edmontoniidae, the presumed sister group of the Nodosauridae within a Nodosauroidea that would not have been Ankylosauria but the last surviving Stegosauria. These hypotheses have not been confirmed by modern cladistic analysis. Today the Denversaurus material, whether it presents a separate species or is identical to E. rugosidens or E. longiceps, is considered nodosaurid and ankylosaurian. Paul suggested that it was the direct descendant of E. longiceps. Burns recovered Denversaurus as the sister species of Panoplosaurus. Denversaurus is the latest known member of the Thyreophora.

Paleobiology

Social Behavior: Denversaurus are solitary or live in small groups.

Diet: While more selective in feeding than Ankylosaurus, it had a wider jaw than its close relatives feeding on ferns, cycads, horsetails, bushes, and shrubs.

Interactions with other species:

The armor was primarily for defense against theropods like Tyrannosaurus and Dakotaraptor, which would have only been able to bite down from above. The spikes would've made it difficult to get close without a carnivore impaling its snout, and the sacral armor prevented a bite to the sacrum that could have paralyzed Denversaurus. If the tail was also a defensive weapon, the sacral armor would have helped to prevent a predator from disabling its defense.

They often formed mixed species herds with other Herbivores including Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, Torosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Ornithomimus, Thescelosaurus, Anzu, Leptoceratops, and Alamosaurus.

Young Denversaurus are vulnerable to predators like Dromaeosaurus, Pectinodon, Acheroraptor, Quetzalcoatlus, Tyrannosaurus, Borealosuchus, Thoracosaurus, Champsosaurus, and Brachychampsa.

Extinction: Unfortunately, the asteroid brought the end of the Denversaurus by sending dust clouds into the air around the world and killing off the plants alongside acid rain. When the plants died, the herbivores including Triceratops, Torosaurus, Alamosaurus, Ornithomimus, Leptoceratops, Thescelosaurus, Edmontosaurus, and Ankylosaurus died. And when the herbivores died, the carnivores like T. Rex, Dromaeosaurus, Pectinodon, and Acheroraptor died.

Danger Tip: They have spike-armored tails and forward-facing shoulder spikes that can swing and slash at you and do a lot of damage combined with their poor eyesight and great sense of smell, this nodosaur won't attack unless disturbed. If you make eye contact with one and hold it with the Denversaurus for several minutes, it will back down. This means that it is easy to avoid confrontation with this magnificent, but deadly species.

Significant Events: A herd of Denversaurus was seen alongside Ankylosaurus browsing on plants in a clearing during Day 3 of the Rescue Team's Mission. They were mostly browsing the vegetation. Two of the loud sisters Lynn and Luan managed to agitate them with airhorns and lame jokes causing the herd to charge into the portal to the park. They now reside in the Hell Creek Herbivore Paddock.

Notable Individuals:

Sherman: An adult male Denversaurus who is quite a bruiser wanting to put up a fight, he forms a bond with Wallabee "Wally" Beatles, Codename Numbuh 4 which they show some uncanny resemblance.

Hell Creek Herbivore Paddock: The Denversaurus herd lives alongside the other herbivores including Triceratops, Torosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Alamosaurus, and Ornithomimus in the large multi-species paddock. They often stick to the more forest areas as they prefer more privacy than the other herbivores. The herd of Denversaurus at Prehistoric Park doesn't usually stick together, but they are almost always viewable. The herd is often seen on the monorail and the jeep tour.

Conclusion: Denversaurus not as famous compared to Ankylosaurus has shown us how ankylosaurs were diverse in the Mesozoic and nodosaurs were still around to the end of the Cretaceous. Denversaurus can be enjoyed by visitors at Prehistoric Park.

The Field Guide might take a long time, like structuring and writing descriptions of the creatures, but also my time in college and spending time with my family. So you can suggest additional information quotes, descriptions, and natural or speculative behaviors for the prehistoric animals that I can edit and you send your suggestions either in reviews or Private Messages.

Examples: Inferring what the toons are doodling on the sketches or snarking quotes.

Negative, hateful, and spam comments are not allowed and will be reported, this is WildExpert24 signing off.