Dinosaurs A to Z
Hadrosauridae

Gryposaurus

"hooked-nosed (Greek"

Generic ornithopod body-plan outline
You 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall
Gryposaurus 7.5 m (24.6 ft) long
as long as 5 people standing fingertip to fingertip
generic ornithopod body plan, scaled to length — not a silhouette of Gryposaurus
Length
7.5 m (24.6 ft)
Period
Late Cretaceous (80–75 Mya)
Place
North America · United States · Canada · India
Food
Herbivore
Clade
Hadrosauridae Dinosauria Ornithischia Cerapoda Ornithopoda Iguanodontia Duck-billed dinosaurs with tooth batteries.
Gryposaurus reconstruction by Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com)
Reconstruction · Nobu Tamura (http://spinops.blogspot.com) (CC-BY)

Gryposaurus (meaning “hooked-nosed (Greek grypos) lizard”; sometimes incorrectly translated as “griffin (Latin gryphus) lizard”) was a genus of duckbilled dinosaur that lived about 80 to 75 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous (late Santonian to late Campanian stages) of North America. Named species of Gryposaurus are known from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Canada, and two formations in the United States: the Lower Two Medicine Formation in Montana and the Kaiparowits Formation of Utah. A possible additional species from the Javelina Formation in Texas may extend the temporal range of the genus to 66 million years ago.

Gryposaurus is similar to Kritosaurus, and for many years the two were thought to be synonyms.

What we know

  • Named by Lambe, 1914.
  • Body length estimated at about 7.5 m.
  • Fossils found in North America and United States.

What we guess

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