While raptors are my namesake and all, the armored dinosaurs are an extremely close second. Maybe if I'd had an Ankylosaur toy to cherish instead of my Primal Rage Talon action figure, I'd be called Polacanthar or something. (Armadon doesn't count, he was clearly ceratopsian.) Everyone always loved T-Rex; I loved the fact that T-Rex could get knocked toothless by something that didn't really even have to move to do it.

Edmontonia is actually probably my all-time favorite, followed by Euplocephalous, but neither lived in the Early Cretaceous. However, Gastonia did, who was my favorite at the Utah Museum of Prehistoric Life. Sauropelta did, too, and both species appear in Mark of the Conifer. Gastonia has a lot of friggin' spines to study; I'm glad I did like 5 scribbles of him while I had a skeleton to study.

Aside from the fact that this clade suffers from probably the worst "It belongs here! No wait ... here!" arguments, there are a lot of cool theories surrounding the ankylos. Some think they may have had trunks or some other appendage on their noses, because they have such big, complex nasal chambers. I'm also well aware that I took some pretty dynamic liberties with how these things might have moved, but the fact that their armor isn't attached to their skeleton just opens up too many worlds of cool to ignore.

The only things I'll say NOT to reference is the spike patterns. Look at a real skeleton to make sure of how things looked; I was kinda random.