Tlatolophus

What it was like

Tlatolophus was a duck-billed dinosaur with a large, hollow crest on its head, a close relative of Parasaurolophus. Its crest curved up and back and was shaped a little like a comma.

Like its relatives, it may have used the crest to make loud calls.

Its world

It lived about 84 to 72 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous, in what is now northern Mexico. Its bones come from the Cerro del Pueblo Formation, where it shared the land with the crested Velafrons, the big-nosed Latirhinus and the troodontid Xenovenator.

How it was found

Ramírez-Velasco and colleagues named Tlatolophus in 2021, from a single find with a nearly complete crest. The name comes from a local word for "word" and a Greek word for crest, because the crest looked like a sign used in old writings of the region to show speech.