Stegopelta

Stegopelta (meaning "roofed shield") is a genus of struthiosaurin nodosaurid dinosaur based on a partial skeleton from the Cretaceous (latest Albian-earliest Cenomanian) Belle Fourche Member of the Frontier Formation of Fremont County, Wyoming, USA.

==History== upright|thumb|left|Armor plates and teeth In 1905, Samuel Wendell Williston described FMNH UR88, a partial armored dinosaur skeleton consisting of a maxilla fragment, seven cervical and two dorsal vertebrae, part of a sacrum and both ilia, caudal vertebrae, parts of the scapulae, both humeral heads, portions of an ulna and both radii, a metacarpal, partial tibia, metatarsal, and armor including a shoulder spine and neck ring. The specimen was in poor condition, as it had eroded from a slope and been walked on by cattle. Ankylosaurians being very poorly known, Williston compared his new genus to Stegosaurus, and the armor to that of Glyptodon. Like that mammal, Stegopelta had a fused section of armor (in its case over the pelvis). Roy Lee Moodie redescribed it in 1910, and considered it to be close to, if not the same as, Ankylosaurus.