Outline: a typical ornithopod
Gilmoreosaurus
"Gilmore's lizard"
Type species Gilmoreosaurus mongoliensis
- Lived
- 84 to 72 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Length
- about 6 m (20 ft)
- Group
- Ornithopods
- Found in
- China
- Named by
- Brett-Surman 1979
Size comparison
To scale
Scale in metersOutline: typical ornithopod shape
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
80 million years ago
Field notes
About Gilmoreosaurus
What it was like
Gilmoreosaurus was a plant eater about 6 meters (20 feet) long, an early relative of the duck-billed dinosaurs. It had a beak and rows of grinding teeth, and walked on two or four legs.
Its world
It lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now northern China. Its bones come from the Iren Dabasu Formation, where it shared the land with the giant oviraptor Gigantoraptor, the tyrannosaur relative Alectrosaurus, the plant eater Bactrosaurus and the ostrich-like Archaeornithomimus.
How it was found
Its bones were first described as a species of another genus. Brett-Surman gave it its own genus in 1979, naming it after the scientist who first described it.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Hadrosauroidea
Sources: WikidataNamed in: M . K. Brett-Surman. 1979. Phylogeny and palaeobiogeography of hadrosaurian dinosaurs. Nature 277:560-562