Dino card No. 0981 of 2,015

Kritosaurus

Say it: kry-toh-SORE-us

Name means: “separated lizard”1

Ate: PlantsDuck-billsLate Cretaceous

Kritosaurus was a duck-billed dinosaur that lived in North America near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. It had a big, flat beak like a duck and could walk on two legs or all fours. This plant-eater munched on tough plants with hundreds of teeth in its cheeks.1

Lived

86 to 66 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

New Mexico, Montana, Texas, USA, and Alberta, Canada2 1

Food

Plants1

Length

9 m1

Weight

4 tonnes1

Artist's life restoration of Kritosaurus — How Kritosaurus may have looked, by Connor Ashbridge. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Kritosaurus means 'separated lizard' because the bones in its cheek were arranged in a special way.1

The first Kritosaurus fossil was found in 1904 by Barnum Brown in New Mexico, but the front of the skull was missing.1

Scientists once thought Kritosaurus had a Roman nose, but that was because the skull was broken and put back together wrong.1

Kritosaurus lived alongside other dinosaurs like Alamosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Pentaceratops, and Bistahieversor.1

Some scientists think Kritosaurus and Anasazisaurus might be the same dinosaur, but others disagree.1

Kritosaurus could reach about 9 metres (30 feet) long and weigh about 4 metric tons (4.4 short tons).1

Myth buster

Myth: Kritosaurus had a big bump on its nose like a Roman nose.

Truth: The original skull was broken and the nose area was reconstructed flat. Later scientists realized the real shape was probably arched like Gryposaurus.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Kritosaurus
Named by: Brown 19102
Group: Duck-bills
Family / clade: Hadrosauridae2
Classification: Ornithischia > Ornithopoda > Iguanodontia > Hadrosauridae2
Age of the rocks: 86 to 66 million years (Santonian to Maastrichtian)2
Rock formations: Kirtland, Fruitland, Fruitland/Kirtland2
Countries: USA, Canada2
Fossil records: 25 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Barnum Brown discovered the first Kritosaurus fossil in 1904 in New Mexico. He named it in 1910, but the front of the skull was missing and he had to guess what it looked like.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether Kritosaurus is the same as Anasazisaurus and exactly how its skull was shaped.1

Where the facts come from

Kritosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Kritosaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@dinowiki.app and we will fix it.