STL Science Center

STL Science Center

20 June 2013

Vaguely Popular

Kind of a big Iguana until you get to the head
Heterodontosaurus is only popular in a few circles. Good days bring us links from all over the internet; those were mostly the days when I was first getting this list of animals started however as I was discussing giants of the dinosaur world such as Triceratops. We have seen that Heterodontosaurus appears in museums as models, book chapters, and even that it is popular enough that children's websites have fact pages dedicated to the little dinosaurs. They have even caught on to the feather craze (I say craze because it seems to me that every single dinosaur is slowly developing feathers or quills the past two or three years regardless of what is definitively known about the animal in question). I am not against them having quills or feathers, I just really enjoy the older illustrations that show it more as a dinosaur from my childhood. Regardless, Heterodontosaurus is one of those dinosaurs that is nondescript enough that it shows up in random tubes and dollar store packages of dinosaurs as the skinny little creature with fangs that may be Coelophysis or Heterodontosaurus or even a Hypsilophodont. This week that dinosaur is Heterodontosaurus, but they are probably all equally correct answers. It has also been modeled many times over in Spore. Sometimes with the prominent teeth showing and sometimes with the teeth modeled correctly. I think we have to admit that the teeth make it a more formidable dinosaur when they are showing. There we have a good summary for the week of Heterodontosaurus: typical non-scary dinosaur unless you can see those teeth, then it gets a little more respect. That is probably exactly how it lived its life as well; minding its own business until it had to get mean.

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