A Yummy Leaf for Breakfast

About this drawing

Look at this baby stegosaurus eating its lunch! Stegosaurus was a herbivore, which is a big word for an animal that eats plants. It didn't eat meat at all. And a body that big needed a whole lot of food.

Its world didn't have grass like your backyard does. Grass came much later. There were ferns, mosses and low plants called cycads, which look a bit like small palm trees. There were pine-like trees, too. Flowers hadn't even shown up yet in the Jurassic, when this dinosaur lived.

Stegosaurus had a small head with a beak at the front, sort of like a turtle's. It used this beak to snip off plants. Farther back, it had small teeth that didn't do much chewing. So it swallowed its food almost whole, and its giant belly slowly did the rest of the work.

Babies started eating plants when they were still very small. They kept growing until they were as long as a school bus. With a short neck and short front legs, they mostly ate things close to the ground. They probably spent almost all day looking for tasty plants, taking their time and never in a hurry. Sounds like a pretty nice life!

• dinosaurs
• stegosaurus
• plants
• preschool