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Description
Thanks to the massive positive response of my sketches on how our conception of T. rex's anatomy changed over the decades (thanks for all the faves!), I decided to do a series - this time with Stegosaurus stenops; Iguanodon and Diplodocus are about to follow.

Initially, Stegosaurus stenops was believed to have plates that hung over its body like some kind of armour, therefore the name "roofed lizzard". Many illustrations from the 19th century (and even in a dinosaur book for children from the 90s that I had as a little child) show it that way. Stegosaurus was depicted as a sluggish, fat creature with a massive tail and its head and neck close to the ground like a vaccum cleaner. The legs, especially the forelimbs, were sprouted.
Later on, from about the 1900s onwards, it was considered more likely that Stegosaurus' plates stood erect on its body. My stegosaurus on the upper right side is of course based on C.R. Knight's painting, who did the plates already in the modern arrangement. Other variants that were hypothized were a symmetric arrangement or all plates in a row. Back then it was believed Stegosaurus had two pairs of tail spikes, which was later corrected. The mouth was reconstructed in a reptilian manner without "cheeks".
During the dinosaur renaissance in the late 1980s, the typical Paulian-Bakkerian stegosaur was born, suffering from the shrinkwrapping syndrome: lanky body with bone structures visible under the skin that certainly shoudln't be visible, neglect of muscle groups like the whole pectoralis group or the caudofemoralis. The head, tail and forelimbs got lifted as much as possible. The plates were either reconstructed covered in thin skin or keratinized. This stegosaur had, as all ornithischian of that paleoart period, "cheeks".
Now, as the anti-shrinkwrapping movement started (btw, I was averse to shrinkwrapping long before that term existed, I considered it anatomically absurd early on and I got scanned drawings from 2008 to prove that), the stegosaurs are (or at least should) be less lanky, and the bulk of some muscle group gets more appreciated (stegosaurs had, for example, a quite massive tight it seems). Head and tail are not lifted that extremely anymore, and the forelimbs probably were not fully erect but of course not sprouted.

Description
Thanks to the massive positive response of my sketches on how our conception of T. rex's anatomy changed over the decades (thanks for all the faves!), I decided to do a series - this time with Stegosaurus stenops; Iguanodon and Diplodocus are about to follow.

Initially, Stegosaurus stenops was believed to have plates that hung over its body like some kind of armour, therefore the name "roofed lizzard". Many illustrations from the 19th century (and even in a dinosaur book for children from the 90s that I had as a little child) show it that way. Stegosaurus was depicted as a sluggish, fat creature with a massive tail and its head and neck close to the ground like a vaccum cleaner. The legs, especially the forelimbs, were sprouted.
Later on, from about the 1900s onwards, it was considered more likely that Stegosaurus' plates stood erect on its body. My stegosaurus on the upper right side is of course based on C.R. Knight's painting, who did the plates already in the modern arrangement. Other variants that were hypothized were a symmetric arrangement or all plates in a row. Back then it was believed Stegosaurus had two pairs of tail spikes, which was later corrected. The mouth was reconstructed in a reptilian manner without "cheeks".
During the dinosaur renaissance in the late 1980s, the typical Paulian-Bakkerian stegosaur was born, suffering from the shrinkwrapping syndrome: lanky body with bone structures visible under the skin that certainly shoudln't be visible, neglect of muscle groups like the whole pectoralis group or the caudofemoralis. The head, tail and forelimbs got lifted as much as possible. The plates were either reconstructed covered in thin skin or keratinized. This stegosaur had, as all ornithischian of that paleoart period, "cheeks".
Now, as the anti-shrinkwrapping movement started (btw, I was averse to shrinkwrapping long before that term existed, I considered it anatomically absurd early on and I got scanned drawings from 2008 to prove that), the stegosaurs are (or at least should) be less lanky, and the bulk of some muscle group gets more appreciated (stegosaurs had, for example, a quite massive tight it seems). Head and tail are not lifted that extremely anymore, and the forelimbs probably were not fully erect but of course not sprouted.