Camarasaurus kameruh-SORRUHS

"vaulted chamber"

Generic sauropod body-plan outline
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Camarasaurus 23 m (75 ft) long
as long as 14 people standing fingertip to fingertip
generic sauropod body plan, scaled to length — not a silhouette of Camarasaurus
Length
23 m (75 ft)
Period
Late Jurassic (155–143.1 Mya)
Place
United States
Food
Herbivore
Clade
Camarasauridae

Camarasaurus ( ) is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that lived during the Late Jurassic in what is now the United States. Its fossils are primarily known from the Morrison Formation dating to the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian ages of the Jurassic, between 155 and 145 million years ago (mya). It was named by Edward Drinker Cope in 1877; it definitively contains three species, C. supremus, the type species, C. grandis, and C. lentus, while some researchers consider C. lewisi to be in its own genus, Cathetosaurus. The generic name means “chambered lizard”, referring to the hollow chambers, known as pleurocoels, in its cervical vertebrae (Greek καμαρα [kamara] meaning ‘vaulted chamber’, or anything with an arched cover, and σαυρος [sauros] meaning ‘lizard’). Hundreds of specimens have been excavated to date, including some nearly complete skeletons.

What we know

  • Named by Cope, 1877a.
  • Body length estimated at about 23 m.
  • Fossils found in United States.

What we guess

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