English: Drawing of a hunkering Gargoyleosaurus, raising its head after taking a drink from a pool of water. A small troodont use a nearby cycad as a look-out platform. Right to the Gargoyleosaurus is equisetac plants growing in the water, while ferns is growing in the mud to the left, all surrounded by conifer trees. In the lower left, a snake is going to enter the water.

• Gargoyleosaurus is based on the 1998 original description of the skull,^[1] a 2005 description of the skeleton^[2] and skeletal mounts in Denver Museum of Nature and Science^[3] and Museum of Ancient Life.^[4][5]. Its colour pattern are inspired by the nodosaurid ankylosaur Borealopelta and the modern Malayan tapir (Acrocodia indica). Fossil pigments from Borealopelta indicate it had a reddish-brown colour with a camouflaging pattern, probably to better avoid big predatory dinosaurs.^[6] Gargoyleosaurus were much smaller than Borealopelta and would probably have benefitted from camouflage as well. The Malayan tapir is primarily black, except the belly, back and hind part which are white. This makes a good camouflage protecting it when resting out in the jungle.^[7]
• The troodont is inferred from fossils attributable to troodontidae found in the Morrison Formation (these were named Hesperornithoides) in 2019).^[8]
• The presence of a snake Is inferred: fossils of snakes dates back at least to the Middle Jurassic, and Late Jurassic genera have been found in Europe as well as North America (such as Diablophis from Colorado, USA).^[9]

References

1. ↑ Carpenter K et.al. (1998). "Skull of a Jurassic ankylosaur (Dinosauria)". Nature 393'(6687): p. 782–783. DOI: 10.1038/31684
2. ↑ Kilbourne B.M. & Carpenter K. (2005). "Redescription of Gargoyleosaurus parkpinorum, a polacanthid ankylosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Albany County, Wyoming". Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie - Abhandlungen 237(1): p. 111-160. DOI: 10.1127/njgpa/235/2005/111
3. ↑ File:Gargoyleosaurus.png
4. ↑ File:Gargoy.jpg
5. ↑ File:Gargoyleosaurus_Museum_of_Anchient_Life.jpg
6. ↑ Brown C.M. et.al. (2017). "An Exceptionally Preserved Three-Dimensional Armored Dinosaur Reveals Insights into Coloration and Cretaceous Predator-Prey Dynamics". Current Biology 27(16): p. 2514-2521
7. ↑ Woodland Park Zoo Animal Fact Sheet: Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus). Archived from the original on September 24, 2006.
8. ↑ Hartman S ey.al. (2019). "A new paravian dinosaur from the Late Jurassic of North America supports a late acquisition of avian flight". PeerJ 7:e7247 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7247
9. ↑ Caldwell M.W. et.al. (2015). "The oldest known snakes from the Middle Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous provide insights on snake evolution". Nature Communications 6:5996