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Lophorhothon atopus
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Lophorhothon atopus

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Lophorhothon is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Alabama, and possibly Georgia and North Carolina. It was the first dinosaur genus discovered in Alabama, in the United States.

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Lophorhothon atopus.jpg
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taxon name
Lophorhothon atopus
taxon rank
species
short name
L. atopus
time period
Late Cretaceous
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via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

5 sections
Contents
  • Discovery and naming
  • Classification
  • See also
  • References
  • Sources

Lophorhothon is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Alabama, and possibly Georgia and North Carolina. It was the first dinosaur genus discovered in Alabama, in the United States.

==Discovery and naming== thumb|left|Reconstruction of the skull Remains of a small, poorly known perhaps saurolophine dinosaur were first discovered during the 1940s, from extensive erosional outcrops of the lower unnamed member of the Mooreville Chalk Formation (Selma Group; lower and middle Campanian) in Dallas County, west of the town of Selma, Alabama. The taxon has since also been reported from Black Creek Formation (Campanian) of North Carolina. The holotype, which is housed in the collections of the Field Museum in Chicago, consists of a fragmentary and disarticulated skull and incomplete postcranial skeleton. The length on the holotype specimen has been estimated as . Which is small for a hadrosaur, but the original specimen is of a juvenile. The adults may have been larger, probably as large as Hadrosaurus, Hypsibema, Kritosaurus, and Gryposaurus. The genus was named by Wann Langston in 1960. It was thought to be the only species of hadrosaur from that fossil formation, until 2016 with the discovery of the primitive hadrosaur, Eotrachodon orientalis. The name Lophorhothon means "crested nose" (Greek lophos meaning 'crested' and rhothon meaning 'nose'). The type species is Lophorhothon atopus. The specific name is derived from Greek atopos, "uncommon" or "strange".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Lophorhothon atopus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.