ankylosaur

noun an·ky·lo·saur \ ˈaŋ-kə-lō-ˌsȯr \

|Updated on: 27 Jun 2018

Definition of ankylosaur

: any of a suborder (Ankylosauria) of herbivorous Cretaceous ornithiscian dinosaurs having a long low-lying thickset body covered dorsally with bony plates

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Recent Examples of ankylosaur from the Web

Plant-eaters like Triceratops and the ankylosaurs, which had to chew their food, also had complex hyoid bones.

— National Geographic, "Why T. Rex Couldn't Waggle Its Tongue," 20 June 2018
The characters dodge and weave to avoid romping, stomping ankylosaurs, styracosaurs, and allosauri; lava bombs are landing everywhere, and the whole movie pretty much pitches itself off a cliff.

— ty burr, BostonGlobe.com, "The new ‘Jurassic World’ is kind of a Tyrannosaurus wreck," 20 June 2018
As Brian Switek reported for Smithsonian.com in 2016, researchers came to a similar conclusion about the tank-like armor and club-like tails of ankylosaur dinosaurs.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Dinosaur Horns Were For Making Love, Not War," 23 Mar. 2018
If ankylosaurs were whacking other dinosaurs, their skeletons haven’t turned up the crucial evidence yet.

— brian switek, Smithsonian, "Introducing ‘Zuul,’ an Ankylosaur That Could Really Make Your Ankles Sore," 8 May 2017
Switek explains that during decomposition the armor plates of ankylosaurs typically fall off and are often washed away or not found.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Spectacularly Detailed Armored Dinosaur “Mummy” Makes Its Debut," 15 May 2017
The operator had just extracted a bit of fossilized skin from an armored nodasaurus, a type of ankylosaur.

— jason daley, Smithsonian, "Spectacularly Detailed Armored Dinosaur “Mummy” Makes Its Debut," 15 May 2017
Tyrannosaurs, hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs, ostrich mimic dinosaurs and more have turned up, but no horned dinosaurs.

— charles p. pierce, Esquire, "Nothing is Real in Trump's America Unless the Cameras Are Rolling," 23 June 2017
Even large armored dinosaurs—like the tank-sized ankylosaur—lived in fear of predators.

— giorgia guglielmi, Science | AAAS, "Did this big dino use camouflage to hide from predators?," 3 Aug. 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'ankylosaur.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.