Saurolophus

Saurolophus is a genus of large hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period of North America and Asia, in what is now the Horseshoe Canyon and Nemegt formations respectively. It is one of the few dinosaur genera known from multiple continents. The type species, S. osborni, was described by Barnum Brown in 1912 from Canadian fossils. A second valid species, S. angustirostris, is represented by numerous specimens from Mongolia, and was described by Anatoly Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky. Saurolophus is distinguished by a spike-like crest which projects up and back from the skull. It was a herbivorous dinosaur which could move either bipedally or quadrupedally.

Saurolophus

Yuya Tamai from Gifu, Japan · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
SaurolophiniPBDB
Diet
herbivorePBDB, for Ornithopoda
Life habit
ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
Length
9 mWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 18 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 38 of 38 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 38 occurrences84–83 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences83–83 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences83–82 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences82–82 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences82–81 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences81–80 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences80–80 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences80–79 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences79–79 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences79–78 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences78–77 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences77–77 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences77–76 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences76–75 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences75–75 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences75–74 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences74–74 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences74–73 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences73–72 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 3 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 3 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 3 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 3 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 3 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 3 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 3 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 3 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 3 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 3 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences84.1 Mya65.5 Mya

38 occurrences of Saurolophus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

38 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

5 formations

Nemegt — 43.60°N, 100.46°ENemegt — 43.49°N, 101.28°ENemegt — 43.87°N, 100.01°ENemegt — 43.82°N, 99.98°ENemegt — 43.87°N, 100.13°ENemegt — 43.48°N, 100.36°ENemegt — 43.48°N, 100.46°ENemegt — 43.50°N, 101.05°ENemegt — 43.47°N, 99.83°ENemegt — 43.53°N, 101.05°ENemegt — 43.85°N, 100.48°ENemegt — 43.61°N, 100.57°ENemegt — 43.44°N, 100.37°EHorseshoe Canyon — 51.82°N, 112.98°WHorseshoe Canyon — 53.45°N, 113.55°WHorseshoe Canyon — 51.75°N, 112.96°WAlmond — 41.87°N, 109.14°WKirtland — 36.18°N, 107.89°WOldman — 50.69°N, 111.62°W

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The named rock units Saurolophus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Saurolophus and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Saurolophus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

71 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 38 sites for Saurolophus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

19 references

Each of the 38 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 7 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Saurolophus

Credit
Yuya Tamai from Gifu, Japan
Licence
CC BY 2.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

3D model

Source
Sketchfab
Licence
CC Attribution
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itSaurolophini through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1912