Outline: a typical ornithopod
Bonapartesaurus
"Bonaparte's lizard"
- Lived
- 72 to 66 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Group
- Ornithopods, Hadrosauridae
- Found in
- Argentina
- Named by
- Cruzado-Caballero and Powell 2017
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
70 million years ago
Field notes
About Bonapartesaurus
What it was like
Bonapartesaurus was a duck-billed plant eater, a relative of Saurolophus. It is known from much of the skeleton behind the head.
Its ancestors came from North America, and it is one of the few hadrosaurs found in South America.
Its world
It lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Argentina. Its bones come from the Allen Formation, where it shared the land with the raptor Austroraptor, the hunter Abelisaurus, the armored Patagopelta and the long-necked Aeolosaurus.
How it was found
Cruzado-Caballero and Powell named Bonapartesaurus in 2017, after a famous paleontologist from Argentina. Its bones had been dug up years earlier and given to another genus.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Hadrosauridae
Sources: WikidataNamed in: P. Cruzado-Caballero and J. E. Powell. 2017. Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis, a new hadrosaurine dinosaur from South America: implications for phylogenetic and biogeographic relations with North America. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 37(2):e1289381:1-16