Outline: a typical ornithopod
Probactrosaurus
"before Bactrosaurus"
- Lived
- 121 to 101 million years ago, Early Cretaceous
- Diet
- Herbivore
- Length
- about 6 m (20 ft)
- Group
- Ornithopods
- Found in
- China
- Named by
- Rozhdestvensky 1966
Size comparison
To scale
Scale in metersOutline: typical ornithopod shape
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
110 million years ago
Field notes
About Probactrosaurus
What it was like
Probactrosaurus was a plant eater about 6 meters (20 feet) long, an early relative of the duck-billed dinosaurs. It had a long, narrow snout and rows of grinding teeth, and it could probably walk on two legs or four.
Its world
It lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now China. Its bones come from the Miaogou Formation, where it shared the land with the predator Shaochilong and the armored Gobisaurus.
How it was found
Rozhdestvensky named Probactrosaurus in 1966. The name means it came before Bactrosaurus, a later relative.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Hadrosauroidea
Sources: WikidataNamed in: A. K. Rozhdestvensky. 1966. Novye igyanodonti ie tsentrallinoy Asii. Phillogeneticheskye y taksonomicheskye veaimoothoshenia poednich Iguanodontidae y rannich Hadrosauridae [New iguanodonts from central Asia. Phylogenetic and taxonomic relationships of late Iguanodontidae and early Hadrosauridae]. Paleontologicheskii Zhurnal 1966(3):103-116