Ankylosauridae

An ankylosaurid is a member of the armored dinosaur family Ankylosauridae that appeared 122 million years ago (along with another family of ankylosaurs, the Nodosauridae) and became extinct 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Ankylosaurids have been found in western North America, Europe and East Asia, though good specimens are rare; most are known only from bone fragments.

Features

The heavy armour, forming a veritable shell on the backs of ankylosaurids and their clubbed tails, makes them look superficially similar to the mammalian glyptodonts (and to a lesser degree to the giant meiolaniid turtles of Australia).

Their heavily armoured heads formed a toothless beak at the front (comparable to modern birds), though the sides of the mouth and the lower jaw did bear small teeth, deeply inset from the jaw. Among all the ornithischians, the endocranial anatomy of ankylosaurs is the most poorly known.

Armor

Ankylosaurids usually had a thick armour plating of fused bone, often interspersed with a variety of spikes and lumps. Ankylosaurids were so heavily armored that some advanced species even had armoured eyelids.