Subscribe to download
Charonosaurus

"Charon's lizard"

Charonosaurus (/kəˌroʊnəˈsɔːrəs/ kə-ROH-nə-SOR-əs; meaning "Charon's lizard") is a genus of dinosaur whose fossils were discovered by Godefroit, Zan & Jin in 2000, on the south bank of the Amur River, dividing China from Russia. It is monotypic, consisting of the species C. jiayinensis.

Charonosaurus is a very large lambeosaurine hadrosaur, estimated around 10 metres (33 ft) in length and 5 metric tons (5.5 short tons) in body mass. It is known from a partial skull (Holotype: CUST J-V1251-57 (Changchun University of Sciences and Technology, Changchun, Jilin Province, China) found in the Late Maastrichtian Yuliangze Formation, west of Jiayin village, Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. Adult and juvenile hadrosaur remains discovered in the same area and formation likely represent the same taxon and supply information on most of the postcranial skeleton; the femur length was up to 1.35 m (4.5 ft). The partial skull resembles that of Parasaurolophus and probably had a similar long, backward-projecting hollow crest, indicated by the highly modified dorsal surface of the frontal bones. Charonosaurus is one of the largest hadrosaurs currently known from Asia and indicates that lambeosaurines survived until the very end of the Cretaceous (lambeosaurines are not known from the Late Maastrichtian in North America).