Stegosaurus in popular culture

The 19th century American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh had named and first described Stegosaurus in 1877, originally interpreted from incomplete fossil remains as an aquatic reptile with turtle-like armor plates that lay flat on its back. Later discoveries allowed Marsh to restore Stegosaurus more accurately as a terrestrial plant-eating dinosaur, initially restored with a single row of plates aligned vertically along its back with eight pairs of spikes on the end of its tail. By the end of the 19th century, Stegosaurus had emerged as one of the most notable American dinosaur discoveries and had passed from the realm of scientific research into the popular imagination, sparked by its strange appearance. In 1893, the British paleontologist Richard Lydekker had reacted with astonishment at Marsh's 1891 illustrations of the skeletons of Stegosaurus and Triceratops: "Prof. Marsh published restorations of two forms, which for strangeness and uncouthness exceed the wildest flights of the imagination."

Stegosaurus would become one of the most recognizable of all dinosaurs, appearing early on in popular books and articles about prehistoric animals, and, starting in the first decades of the 20th century, taking a prominent place among the mounted dinosaur skeletons featured in major museums. Stegosaurus has been depicted on film, in cartoons and comics, and as children's toys.

Among its claims to fame, Stegosaurus was made the official state fossil for Colorado on April 28, 1982, after a two-year campaign begun by a class of 4th graders and their teacher Ruth Sawdo at McElwain Elementary School in Thornton, Colorado. The first fossils of Stegosaurus were discovered in Colorado in 1877, a year after the state entered the Union (1876).

The famous 20th century American sculptor Alexander Calder designed a 50-foot-tall by 32-foot-wide abstract metal sculpture in 1972 known as "Stegosaurus". Fabricated by the Segre Iron Works and constructed out 45 steel plates bolted together, the monumental piece, painted a bright orange-red, was installed in Burr Mall in Hartford, Connecticut in 1973, placed near a fountain as if to suggest an animal approaching for a drink. The work was commissioned as a memorial to Alfred E. Burr, who founded the Hartford Times newspaper in the 19th century. The British botanist and writer Nicholas Guppy reportedly saw the planned abstract sculpture with enlarged triangular projections at an early development stage and observed that it "looked like a prehistoric monster", a comparison that inspired the name "Stegosaurus". A small-scale maquette version of the steel sculpture, measuring 13-feet-tall and 14-feet-wide, now stands outside the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Also called "Stegosaurus" and painted bright orange-red, the preparatory stage work had been installed at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington in 1975, but was sold at auction in 2000 for $4.1 million to the Toledo Museum of Art.