No. 1 - - Stegosaurus of Colorado

[1] Colorado – Stegosaurus (1982)

shortly after this image was captured, the stegosaurus thagomized Kenny to death.

The coolest state dinosaur is definitively the Stegosaurus.

It looks cool, it’s a total classic and it’s covered in awesome and mysterious plates and spikes. Hailing in many instances from the Morrison Formation, some of which is in Colorado, around 80 samples of stegosaurus have emerged, giving paleontologists a lot of information to work with.

Stegosaurus’ weapon of choice is the Thagomizer, which is the actual name of its four-spiked tail. “Teeth,” “claws” and “horns” aren’t anywhere close to as cool as “thagomizer.”

Also, Colorado deserves wicked points for being a pioneer in naming an official state fossil by doing so in 1982, years before any of its contemporaries.

Stegosaurus is the largest of the stegosaurs, and adapted the awesome thagomizer and rows of plates by the mid-to-late Jurassic era, 150 million years ago, ages before ceratopsians became proficient in adapting horns and frills as deterrents from predators.

Hands down, the best official state dinosaur is stegosaurs.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stegosaurus