--- title: Horns, frills, plates and clubs: Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus and the duck-bills — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Horns, frills, plates and clubs: Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus and the duck-bills», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Plant-eating dinosaurs could not run from every hunter, so many grew horns, fri --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Horns, frills, plates and clubs: Trice… # Horns, frills, plates and clubs: Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus and the duck-bills Lesson 267 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/0/) — Plant-eating dinosaurs could not run from every hunter, so many grew horns, frills, plates, spikes and clubs, and each one tells its own story. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/1/) — Triceratops had three horns and a huge bony frill, lived at the same time and place as T. rex, and one Triceratops bone has T. rex bite marks that healed, so it got away. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/2/) — Stegosaurus had two rows of tall thin plates for show and four tail spikes that were a real weapon: one bone of Allosaurus, a big meat-eater, has a hole that a spike fits into exactly. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/3/) — Ankylosaurus was a living tank, covered in bony plates with a heavy club on its tail that could break a predator's leg with one swing. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/4/) — Others had no armour at all: duck-billed dinosaurs ground plants with hundreds of packed teeth, honked through hollow crests and looked after their babies in busy nesting colonies. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/5/) — Triceratops had three horns and a big bony frill, weighed as much as an elephant or more, and lived at the same time and place as T. rex. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/6/) — The frill was probably for showing off and recognising its own kind, with some protection; it changed shape as the animal grew, like a deer's antlers. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/7/) — Stegosaurus plates stood in two rows and were probably for display, maybe warmth; they were too thin to be good armour, and its brain was only about the size of a lime. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/8/) — The idea that Stegosaurus had a second brain in its hip is a myth; the space there held nerves and perhaps energy-rich tissue, as in birds' hips today. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/9/) — The four tail spikes of Stegosaurus are called a thagomizer, a name scientists borrowed from a funny cartoon; an Allosaurus bone has a hole that fits a spike. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/10/) — Ankylosaurus was covered with bony plates in its skin and had a heavy club on its tail that could break a predator's leg. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/12/) — Duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, such as Edmontosaurus had hundreds of teeth packed together to grind plants. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/13/) — Parasaurolophus had a long hollow crest that probably worked like a trumpet, making deep honking sounds. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/14/) — Maiasaura, the «good mother lizard», nested in colonies, and nests with babies of different sizes show the young were cared for. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/267-horns-frills-plates-and-clubs/15/) — Pachycephalosaurus had a bony dome up to 25 centimetres thick; scientists argue whether it head-butted like goats, and some domes have healed injuries, which supports the head-butting idea. - ← previous: [The long-necked giants: Diplodocus, Brachiosaurus, Argentinosaurus and Brontosaurus](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/266-the-long-necked-giants-sauropods/) - next →: [Raptors: the real Velociraptor, claws, feathers and film mistakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/268-raptors-the-real-velociraptor/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)