Parasaurolophus
Scientific name
- Scientific name
- Parasaurolophus
How to say it in other languages
- Chinese
- 副櫛龍屬
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Parasaurolophus” page and Wikispecies (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Parasaurolophus is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of what is now North America, about 76.5–73 million years ago. Its name means “near crested lizard”. It was given this name because when it was first discovered scientists thought it was related to Saurolophus. It was a herbivore that walked both as biped and a quadruped. It probably lived in herds.
Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaur. They had a large head crest, which was a long curved tube. It went upwards and back from the skull. The crest has been much discussed by scientists. They think its main functions were visual recognition of species and sex, acoustic resonance (making a loud sound), and thermoregulation. Parasaurolophus is one of the rarer hadrosaurs: there are only a few good specimens.
Written for younger readers
Parasaurolophus, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Dinosaurs
Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaur, or a duck-billed dinosaur.
They were large quadruped hadrosaurs. They had front legs similar to a horse’s and had rigid, straight tails. They are unique among hadrosaurs that they had trombone-like head crests.
They ate plants and shrubs.
They lived before the time of the K-T extinction, during the Cretaceous time period of the Mesozoic. This was about 76.5–73 million years ago.
Early depictions showed hadrosaurs swimming in swamps and eating sea grass. However, we now know that hadrosaurs were land-dwelling dinosaurs. They lived in what is now the following areas: Alberta, Canada; New Mexico; Utah.
Parasaurolophus were discovered in the year 1920, from a fossil in near Sand Creek along the Red Deer River in Alberta, Canada. They were named by a man named William Parks.
- Where they actually lived
- Their speed
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Parasaurolophus” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
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