Adynomosaurus arcanus

Generic ornithopod body-plan outline
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Adynomosaurus 9 m (29.5 ft) long
as long as 6 people standing fingertip to fingertip
generic ornithopod body plan, scaled to length — not a silhouette of Adynomosaurus
Length
9 m (29.5 ft)
Period
Late Cretaceous (70 Mya)
Place
Europe · Spain
Food
Herbivore
Clade
Hadrosauridae Dinosauria Ornithischia Cerapoda Ornithopoda Iguanodontia Duck-billed dinosaurs with tooth batteries.

Adynomosaurus is a genus of lambeosaurine dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of what is now Catalonia, Spain. First discovered in 2012, it was named in 2019 with the type and only species being Adynomosaurus arcanus. It is only known from scant material, but is distinguished from other hadrosaurs by its weakly developed shoulder blade which would have had underdeveloped musculature, which lends it its scientific name, partially from the Greek word for “weak”. Its exact relationships with other hadrosaurs remain unresolved, with it not consistently being recovered as a relative of any other specific genera, though some studies have allied it with Tsintaosaurini or even found it outside of Hadrosauridae. It would have lived as part of a diverse coastal estuary ecosystem, made up of meandering rivers and mud flats.

What we know

  • Named by Prieto-Márquez et al., 2019.
  • Fossils found in Europe and Spain.

What we guess

The reconstruction notes for Adynomosaurus — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.