Saurolophus
| Saurolophus | ||||||||||||
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Live reconstruction of Saurolophus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (Upper Campanium to Lower Maastrichtian ) | ||||||||||||
| 76.4 to 69.9 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Saurolophus | ||||||||||||
| Brown , 1912 | ||||||||||||
Saurolophus is a genus of the bird's pelvis dinosaur (Ornithischia) from the large group of herbivorous hadrosaurs (Hadrosauridae) and livedin North America and Asiaduring the late Upper Cretaceous .
The fossils of the North American type species S. osborni were found in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation in Alberta and described by Brown in 1912 . An Asiatic species, S. angustirostris , was described by Roschdestwenski in 1952 after several skulls and skeletons from a total of 15 specimens found in the Nemegt formation in Mongolia .
description
Saurolophus reached about nine to twelve meters in length. It had a solid, concave bone crest that was 13 centimeters long and pointed backwards. This ridge was formed by the nasal bones and traversed by the nasal passages. It was therefore hypothesized that part of the nasal tissue might have been inflatable and enabled the animals to make barking sounds. In this case, the bone crest would have served as a support for the sac-like structure and increased its surface area. Since the hadrosaurs lived in groups, it is quite conceivable that they communicated acoustically with one another, especially over greater distances.
The tip of the toothless beak was curved slightly upwards. He had hundreds of close-set molars to grind the plant food. The hind legs of Saurolophus were significantly longer and stronger than its front legs. He could move on two and four legs.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gregory S. Paul : The Princeton Field Guide To Dinosaurs. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-691-13720-9 , pp. 300-302, online .