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Spiked structure on the tails of dinosaurs of the family Stegosauria

[[File:Thagomizer. tif|thumb|Best evidence for the use of the thagomizer is this Allosaurus tail (caudal) vertebra showing a punctured process. The hole perfectly matches a thagomizer spike. The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name. Cartoonist Gary Larson invented the name "thagomizer" in 1982 as a joke in his comic strip The Far Side, and it was gradually adopted as an informal term sometimes used within scientific circles, research, and education. thumb|right|A thagomizer on the tail of a Stegosaurus fossil

There has been debate about whether the thagomizer was used simply for display, as posited by Gilmore in 1914, or used as a defensive weapon. Robert Bakker noted that it is likely that the stegosaur tail was much more flexible than those of other ornithischian dinosaurs because it lacked ossified tendons, thus lending credence to the idea of the thagomizer being a weapon. He also observed that Stegosaurus could have maneuvered its rear easily by keeping its large hindlimbs stationary and pushing off with its very powerfully muscled but short forelimbs, allowing it to swivel deftly to deal with attack. In 2010, analysis of a digitized model of Kentrosaurus aethiopicus showed that the tail could bring the thagomizer around to the sides of the dinosaur, possibly striking an attacker beside it. In 2001, a study of thagomizers by McWhinney et al. showed a high incidence of trauma related damage. This too supports the theory that the principal function of the thagomizer was defense in combat. There is also evidence for Stegosaurus defending itself, in the form of an Allosaurus tail vertebra with a partially healed puncture wound that fits a Stegosaurus tail spike. The species of stegosaur known as Stegosaurus stenops had four dermal spikes, each about long. Discoveries of articulated stegosaur armor show that, at least in some species, these spikes protruded horizontally from the tail, not vertically as is often depicted. Initially, Marsh described S. armatus as having eight spikes in its tail, unlike S. stenops. However, recent research re examined this and concluded this species also had four.

thumb|A view of the Thagomizer graphing dashboard's graphical user interface (GUI). In 2023, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco presented Thagomizer, a modality for the interrogation of RNA protein binding events in CLIP Seq (Cross linking and immunoprecipitation) data.