Dino card No. 1581 of 2,015

Saurolophus

Say it: saw-ROL-oh-fus

Name means: “lizard crest”1

Ate: PlantsDuck-billsLate Cretaceous

Saurolophus was a big, plant-eating dinosaur with a duck-like beak and a pointy crest on its head. It lived near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs in North America and Asia, and could walk on two legs or all fours.1

Lived

84 to 66 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada; Mongolia; and Wyoming, USA1 2

Food

Plants1

Length

9 to 12 m1

about 9 to 12 meters long, based on related hadrosaurs

Weight

2 tonnes to 5 tonnes1

Height

3 to 4 m1

at the hips

Artist's life restoration of Saurolophus — How Saurolophus may have looked, by Illustration by L. Xing and Y. Liu.. CC BY 2.5, 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

Saurolophus is one of the few dinosaurs known from both North America and Asia, which suggests they could cross land bridges.1

The first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton ever found in Canada was a Saurolophus, discovered in 1911.1

A huge bonebed in Mongolia called Dragon's Tomb contains at least 21 Saurolophus individuals, showing they lived in groups.1

Its teeth were packed into dental batteries, with hundreds of teeth that were constantly replaced, so it could chew tough plants.1

Saurolophus could reach food up to about 4 meters (13 feet) above the ground, thanks to its long neck and body.1

The crest on its head was a solid spike, not a hollow tube like in some other duck-billed dinosaurs.1

Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Saurolophus could swim in the ocean.

Truth: It lived near rivers and lakes, but it was a land animal that walked and ate plants on land.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Saurolophus
Named by: Brown 19122
Group: Duck-bills
Family / clade: Hadrosauridae2
Classification: Ornithischia > Ornithopoda > Iguanodontia > Hadrosauridae2
Age of the rocks: 84 to 66 million years (Campanian to Maastrichtian)2
Rock formations: Nemegt, Horseshoe Canyon, Almond2
Countries: Mongolia, Canada, USA2
Fossil records: 38 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Barnum Brown named Saurolophus in 1912 from a nearly complete skeleton found in Alberta, Canada, in 1911.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether some fossils from California and Wyoming belong to Saurolophus or to a separate genus.1

Where the facts come from

Saurolophus (en.wikipedia.org)
Saurolophus 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.