Miragaia longicollum

Maybe te most od loking stegosaur ever!- Miragaia longicollum a 6 metre long, portugese stegosaur with an extremely long neck. He looks likea cross between a sauropod and a stegosaur. This might be a case of convergent evolution, meaning that two animals developed the same special feature-in thsi case the long neck, without being in the same family or even related. Miragaia probably used that long neck to reach high plants. This might even give us suggestions of the environment of this time and place. In our time, plant eating animals sometimes have to become bigger or develop abnormal features to reach their food scources. Over time, the plants get bigger to prevent herbivores to eat them, and so have the herbivores. In this case, a once short necked stegosaur, couldnt reach its food scources and developed a longer neck to reach them. Miragaia is known from a single skeleton. The rear part is missing but the front is nearly complete.Miragaia was medium sized for a stegosaur. It shows the plates on its back that are typical for a stgosaur an it had two long spines on its shoulders, probably to defend itself from portugese predators liek lourinhanosaurus. It isnt known how the plates looked on its rear part, but most palaeo artists show him with spines on the back, beginning from the hip down to the tail, much like kentrosaurus had. Miragaia is unique among stegosaurs due its long neck and his epitheton longicollum means long necked.