Gargoyleosaurus was about 10 feet (3 m) long and was roughly 3.3 feet (1 m) tall to the top of the shoulder - it may have weighed about a ton.

According to Gargoyleosaurus' describers, Kenneth Carpenter et al., "Despite its geological age, the skull shows features seen in Late Cretaceous ankylosaurs, including fusion of bone armour to the surface of the skull and mandible and closure of two skull openings, the antorbital and upper temporal fenestrae. The new taxon also has characters common to the two ankylosaur families, the Ankylosauridae and Nodosauridae, supporting the proposal that the Ankylosauria originated from a single ancestor."

This great photo of the holotype of Gargoyleosaurus parkpini, DMNH 27726, was taken by Jim Puckett in the Dinosaur Hall of "Prehistoric Journey" at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

DIET
Gargoyleosaurus was an herbivore (it ate only plants), eating low-lying plant material like cycads, ginkgos, conifers, ferns, horse-tail rushes, etc.

INTELLIGENCE
Gargoyleosaurus was an ankylosaur, whose intelligence (as measured by its relative brain to body weight, or EQ) was low among the dinosaurs.

CLASSIFICATION
Gargoyleosaurus belonged to the:

• Kingdom Animalia (animals)
• Phylum Chordata (having a hollow nerve chord ending in a brain)
• Class Archosauria (diapsids with socket-set teeth, etc.)
• Order Ornithischia - bird-hipped dinosaurs
• Suborder Thyreophora (Enoplosauria) - armored, spiked and/or plated dinosaurs
• Superfamily Ankylosauria - armored dinosaurs
• Family Ankylosauridae - armored dinosaurs that have clubbed tails
• Genus Gargoyleosaurus
• Species G. parkpini (type species named by: Carpenter et al., 1998)