At 5:30 in the morning, the Random Object Randomogrifier handed me a Stegosaurus. I thought I had drawn one before, maybe the little rubbery toy, but I could not find the recording. This Safari model has more detail, so it made for a good sketch subject. Composition is always the first step, blocking in shapes so everything fits the page before adding detail and shading.
Stegosaurs were Jurassic plant eaters. They lived before the continents split, so their fossils have been found on every continent except Antarctica, which I suspect is only because nobody is looking there. They had four tail spikes for defense, very small brain cavities, and for years paleontologists argued they might have had a second brain in the pelvic area. Current thinking is that it was a nerve bundle to help control the tail.
The plates on their backs grew from the skin, not the skeleton, more like crocodile scales. They may have been used for heat regulation and display. Some studies suggest sexual dimorphism, with males having larger, spikier plates and females having smaller, rounded ones. That would make the model I sketched today a female.
Stegosaurus means “roof lizard” because during the Bone Wars Marsh and Cope thought the plates lay flat like a turtle shell. They even mounted the legs sideways, which would have forced the belly to carve a ditch everywhere it walked. Later studies showed their posture was higher in the back, like a race car ready to move.
Click here to watch this episode of Sketch and Coffee!
Also, if you, or a teacher friend, would like a 20-30 minute lesson plan on Stegosaurus, feel free to download and share this one:
Leave a Reply