Kritosaurus

Kritosaurus is an incompletely known genus of hadrosaurid (duck-billed) dinosaur. It lived about 74.5-66 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous of North America. The name means "separated lizard" (referring to the arrangement of the cheek bones in an incomplete type skull), but is often mistranslated as "noble lizard" in reference to the presumed "Roman nose" (in the original specimen, the nasal region was fragmented and disarticulated, and was originally restored flat).

==History of discovery== thumb|left|Barnum Brown's initial flatheaded reconstruction of the skull of K. navajovius, 1910 In 1904, Barnum Brown discovered the type specimen (AMNH 5799) of Kritosaurus near the Ojo Alamo Formation, San Juan County, New Mexico, United States, while following up on a previous expedition. He initially could not definitely correlate the stratigraphy, but by 1916 was able to establish it as from what is now known as the late Campanian-age De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation. When discovered, much of the front of the skull had either eroded or fragmented, and Brown reconstructed this portion after what is now called Edmontosaurus, leaving out many fragments. However, he had noticed that something was different about the fragments, but ascribed the differences to crushing. He initially wanted to name it Nectosaurus, but found out that this name was already in use; Jan Versluys, who had visited Brown before the change, inadvertently leaked the previous choice. He kept the specific name, though, leading to the combination K. navajovius.