15 Facts About Parasaurolophus

Parasaurolophus is a genus of herbivorous hadrosaurid ornithopod dinosaur that lived in what is North America and possibly Asia during the Late Cretaceous Period, about 76.

Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaurid, part of a diverse family of Cretaceous dinosaurs known for their range of bizarre head adornments which were likely used for communication and better hearing.

Parasaurolophus remains are rare in Alberta, with only one other partial skull from the Dinosaur Park Formation, and three Dinosaur Park specimens lacking skulls, possibly belonging to the genus.

Parasaurolophus is known from three certain species, P walkeri, P tubicen, and P cyrtocristatus.

Parasaurolophus had a diet consisting of leaves, twigs and pine needles which would imply that it was a browser.

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Parasaurolophus is known from many adult specimens, and a juvenile described in 2013, numbered RAM 140000 and nicknamed Joe, after a volunteer at the Raymond M Alf Museum of Paleontology.

Recent restudy of a juvenile braincase previously assigned to Lambeosaurus, now assigned to Parasaurolophus, provides evidence that a small tubular crest was present in juveniles.

Parasaurolophus proposed that there was a nerve connection between the crest and the brain, so that the latter could be cooled by the former.

Parasaurolophus is often hypothesized to have used its crest as a resonating chamber to produce low frequency sounds to alert other members of a group or its species.

Parasaurolophus noted that the crest's internal structures are similar to those of a swan and theorized that an animal could use its elongated nasal passages to create noise.

Weishampel in 1981 suggested that Parasaurolophus made noises ranging between the frequencies 55 and 720 Hz, although there was some difference in the range of individual species because of the crest size, shape, and nasal passage length, most obvious in P cyrtocristatus.

Parasaurolophus's hypothesis was seemingly supported by skin preserved above the neck and back of Corythosaurus and Edmontosaurus.

Parasaurolophus walkeri is known from one specimen which might contain a pathology.

Parasaurolophus walkeri, from the Dinosaur Park Formation, was a member of a diverse and well-documented fauna of prehistoric animals, including well-known dinosaurs such as the horned Centrosaurus, Chasmosaurus, and Styracosaurus; fellow duckbills Gryposaurus and Corythosaurus; tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus; and armored Edmontonia, Euoplocephalus and Dyoplosaurus.

When Parasaurolophus existed, the Fruitland Formation was swampy, positioned in the lowlands, and close to the shore of the Cretaceous Interior Seaway.