Saurolophus
Lizard with a crest
The name Saurolophus means "lizard with a crest", it comes from the ancient Greek saurus, which can be translated as "lizard", and lophos, which means "comb".
Because there are a number of nearly complete skeletal systems, archaeologists have a good idea of what Saurlophus looked like.
The most prominent feature of Saurolophus is the crest protruding from the skull.
This was hollow and there are various speculations about what it was used for:
- It was a respiratory organ that could have produced sounds
- it was for thermoregulation
- primarily it was a gender characteristic
| Profile | Saurolophus |
|---|---|
| epoch | Upper Cretaceous 76.4 to 69.9 million years |
| Order | Vogelbeckendinosaurier (Ornithischia) |
| Subordination | Ornithopoda |
| Family | Iguanodontia |
| group | Hadrosauridae |
| genus | Saurolophus |
| Art | S. osborni, S. angustirostris |
| Height | 4 meters |
| length | 9 to 12 meters |
| Weight | 3 tons |
| Locations | Mongolia |
Image source and copyright: Debivort / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Steveoc 86, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Illustration by L. Xing and Y. Liu., CC BY 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5, via Wikimedia Commons