Saurolophus

Saurolophus
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
~
Mounted S. angustirostris skeleton at Nagoya City Science Museum
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Ornithischia
Clade: Ornithopoda
Family: Hadrosauridae
Subfamily: Saurolophinae
Tribe: Saurolophini
Genus:
Brown, 1912
Type species
Saurolophus osborni
Brown, 1912
Other species
  • S. angustirostris Rozhdestvensky, 1952

Saurolophus (/sɔːˈrɒləfəs/; meaning "lizard crest") 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 (about 70 to 66 million years ago). 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.