Long-Necked Stegosaur Defies Reputation

Feb. 25, 2009 -- The classic image of a stegosaur calls to mind a grazing beast with short legs and a short neck, but a newly discovered species from Portugal was found to have one of the longest necks ever recorded for a dinosaur, relative to overall body size, according to a new study.

See paleontologist Jack Horner muse on retro-engineering a dinosaurin this video segment.

Miragaia longicollum, meaning "long-necked wonderful goddess of the Earth," had more neck vertebrae than almost any other dinosaur, tying the record previously set by three Chinese sauropods, the study found.

Octavio Mateus, who led the research, told Discovery News that the new species and other stegosaurs were four-legged plant eaters "with a row of plates and spines along the body from the neck to the tail." One swift swing of the tail could jab the sharp spines into would-be attackers.

But this was no ordinary squat stegosaur.

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"Contrary to other stegosaur dinosaurs, Miragaia longicollum had a long neck with 17 vertebrae, which is as much as long-necked sauropod dinosaurs," added Mateus, a paleontologist at the Universidade Nova da Lisboa in Portugal.

He and his team analyzed the fossils, excavated near Miragaia in the municipality of Lourinha at a Late Jurassic site dating to between 144 and 159 million years ago. The fossils include the only known cranial remains for any European stegosaur. A juvenile, likely of the same species, was also discovered at the site.

The findings are published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Unlike another famous modern long-necked animal, the giraffe, this Portuguese dinosaur probably did not lift its head much.

"The anatomy of the vertebrae suggests that the neck was at shoulder level, horizontally parallel to the ground," Mateus explained. "They could raise the neck and head, but that was not the body's neutral position."