Parasaurolophus
Parasaurolophus is a genus of herbivorous ornithopod dinosaur that lived in what is now North America and possibly Asia. It is known for its large, elaborate cranial crest, which at its largest forms a long curved tube projecting upwards and back from the skull. The genus was first described in 1922 by William Parks from a skull and partial skeleton found in Alberta. It was an herbivore that walked both as a biped and as a quadruped.
About Parasaurolophus in brief
Parasaurolophus is a genus of herbivorous ornithopod dinosaur that lived in what is now North America and possibly Asia. It is known for its large, elaborate cranial crest, which at its largest forms a long curved tube projecting upwards and back from the skull. Three species are universally recognized: P. walkeri, P. tubicen, and the short-crested P. cyrtocristatus. A fourth species, P. jiayensis, has been proposed, although it is more commonly placed in the separate genus Charonosaurus. Remains are known from Alberta, New Mexico and Utah, and possibly Heilongjiang,. The genus was first described in 1922 by William Parks from a skull and partial skeleton found in Alberta. It was an herbivore that walked both as a biped and as a quadruped. It lived during the Late Cretaceous Period, about 76. 5–73 million years ago. Its specific name is derived from the Latin curtus and cristatus, which means ‘near crested lizard’ or ‘cresting lizard’ It is one of the rarer hadrosaurids, known from only a handful of good specimens. The range of overlying Kirtland Formation overlying rocks found in overlying overlying areas of the Fruitland Formation was expanded in 1979, when David B. Weishel and James A. Jensen described a similar crest with a similar type of skull. All of them can be distinguished from each other, and many differences between them are therefore named.
The first type of P. walkeri was named in honor of Sir Byron Edmund Walker, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Ontario Museum. In 1921, Charles H. Sternberg recovered a partial skull from the San Juan County, New Mexico, and sent it to Uppsala, Sweden, where Carl Wiman described it as a second species in 1931. In 1961, John Ostrom described another good specimen from New Mexico as P cyrocristatus in 1961. In 1995, another partial skull has been found in Utah with the short, rounded crest, and much of the postcranial skeleton except for the feet, neck, and parts of the tail. In 1999, Robert Sullivan and Thomas Williamson gave the genus a monographic treatment in 1999, covering aspects of its anatomy and taxonomy and the functions of its crest. The species is therefore named the type species P. walkeri, P tubicEN, and P cYROTRISTATIS, which have many differences from the other species, and have been named the first type species of P walkeri, P tubicens, and P cyracristatus, respectively. The genus is based on ROM 768, a skull missing most of the Tail and the hind legs below the knees, which was found by a field party in 1920 near Sand Creek along the Red Deer River in Alberta, Canada.
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This page is based on the article Parasaurolophus published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
