Dinosaurs A to Z
Stegosauridae

Kentrosaurus aethiopicus KEN-troh-SOR-us

"Spiked lizard"

Kentrosaurus silhouette
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Kentrosaurus 4.5 m (14.8 ft) long
as long as 3 people standing fingertip to fingertip
silhouette · Matthew Dempsey (CC-BY) via PhyloPic
Length
4.5 m (14.8 ft) — About 4.5 m long, ~500 kg — much smaller than Stegosaurus, with more spikes.
Period
Late Jurassic (155–150 Mya)
Place
Africa · Tanzania
Food
Herbivore — Low-growing ferns and cycads, probably with a beak that cropped soft plant material.
Clade
Stegosauridae Dinosauria Ornithischia Thyreophora Stegosauria Stegosaurus and close relatives.

A small African stegosaur bristling with shoulder spikes and a tail it swung to fight back.

Kentrosaurus was an African stegosaur, smaller than Stegosaurus but more heavily armed. The plates along its back gave way to long spikes from the middle of the back onward, with extra spikes pointing sideways from its hips. It lived around the same time as Stegosaurus, but on a different continent and at about half the size.

More about Kentrosaurus

Discovery

Named by Edwin Hennig · 1915 · the Tendaguru Formation in the Lindi Region of Tanzania (then German East Africa)

The first fossils were found by the German Tendaguru Expedition in 1909, and expedition leader Werner Janensch recognised them as belonging to a stegosaur on 24 July 1910. German palaeontologist Edwin Hennig formally named and described the animal in 1915.

The name comes from the Greek for "sharp point" or "prickle" plus "lizard," so roughly "pointed lizard." Hennig added the species name aethiopicus to mark its African origin.

Portrait of Edwin Hennig
Edwin Hennig A German palaeontologist who named and described Kentrosaurus in 1915 and assigned it to the family Stegosauridae.
Was Kentrosaurus really a primitive stegosaur?
It was often thought to be a primitive member of the Stegosauria. However, several recent cladistic analyses instead find it more derived than many other stegosaurs and a close relative of Stegosaurus within the Stegosauridae.
Did male and female Kentrosaurus differ in size?
The thigh bones come in two different types. This suggests that one sex may have been larger and more stout than the other, though the text presents it as an inference rather than a settled fact.

What we know

  • Plates on the neck and shoulders, spikes on the back and tail.
  • Extra pair of long spikes pointing sideways from the hips.
  • Found in the Tendaguru Formation in Tanzania, alongside Giraffatitan.
  • About half the length and a fifth the weight of Stegosaurus.

What we guess

  • Whether the hip spikes were defensive weapons or display structures.
  • How it interacted with the giant sauropods and theropods in the same ecosystem.
  • Whether the plates were brightly colored or warmed in the sun.