hey, horny toad!

A LITTLE LOOK FROM LONG AGO

Are horny toads
little dinosaurs?

A crown of horns. A spiky body. A dinosaur look.
It’s easy to see where the nickname comes from.

Horny toads are lizards. This family tree shows how groups of animals are related. But look closely at these armored dinosaurs—spotting the look-alikes is part of the fun.

Explore their family story ↓

SPOT THE LOOK-ALIKES

Big armor. Little echoes.

01 / GASTONIA5
About 4.6 m / 15 ft longAdult for comparison4

Those spikes along the sides.

Gastonia had a broad body covered in bony armor, with large spikes around its shoulders. Look at its shape. Do those spikes remind you of a horny toad’s spiny sides?1

02 / TARCHIA5
About 5.5 m / 18 ft longAdult for comparison4

A broad body. An armored look.

Tarchia’s wide body and bumpy armor give it a familiar look. Then look at the tail: that bony club is something a horny toad doesn’t have.2

Close-up from the animated video showing the horned lizard’s face, head horns, and spiny scales.

THE LITTLE NEIGHBOR WE KNOW

Look familiar?

Horny toads have spiny scales and a broad, flattened body. Dinosaur armor and lizard scales are different, but the animals can look alike.3

Look at the horns behind the head, the bumpy back, and the pointed scales along the sides. Those features give this little horny toad a dinosaur look.

THERE’S MORE TO THE STORY

A very old
family story.

Illustrated family tree running from ancient reptile ancestors at top to living snakes, other lizards, horned lizards, crocodilians, and birds at bottom. A dashed line marks the asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Non-bird dinosaurs end at the line. The ancestors of living lizards, crocodilians, and birds continue past it; horned lizards evolve later.

Follow the branches from the deep past at the top to living animals at the bottom. The asteroid shows when a space rock hit Earth, 66 million years ago.

Open full-size image ↗

Similar looks. Different branches. Horny toads are on the lizard branch of the family tree. Gastonia and Tarchia are on the dinosaur branch.

A living dinosaur surprise. Birds are dinosaurs too! Their ancestors—animals in their family long ago—survived when the asteroid hit.6

A FAMILY THAT SURVIVED

A little horny toad with a
very long family history.

Some lizards survived the asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago. Their families kept going as the world changed around them. Over millions of years, new kinds of lizards appeared. One branch of that big family tree became the horny toads we know today.

How do we know about animals from so long ago? Fossils leave clues. Old bones can help scientists learn what an animal looked like and when it lived. Horny-toad fossils go back more than 13 million years—long before the first people. Their family began even earlier, but scientists are still piecing that story together.7

BACK TO OUR LITTLE LIZARD

Big personality.
A much smaller appetite.

Those armored dinosaurs ate plants. Our Texas horny toad has a different menu: plenty of harvester ants.

Watch how horny toads eat →

Notes & sources

  1. Gastonia · American Museum of Natural History ↗
  2. Tarchia · Natural History Museum ↗
  3. Close-up from our animated horned-lizard video.
  4. Adult silhouettes follow the approximate visual proportions in the Natural History Museum’s comparisons. Approximate dinosaur lengths: Gastonia, 4.6 m · Tarchia, 5.5 m. Reconstructions and fossil-based size estimates can vary.
  5. Dinosaur reconstructions: TotalDino / Wikimedia Commons. Gastonia, CC BY 4.0; Tarchia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original illustrations shown unchanged. Reconstructions interpret fossils; colors are artistic choices.
  6. This tree shows some animal groups, not every branch of the family. Relationships: Natural History Museum. Original illustrated family-tree guide created for Hey, Horny Toad!
  7. Horned-lizard fossils and evolutionary dating · Lizards and the asteroid extinction