page_title: Lambeosaurus
section_title: Early discoveries and names
hierarchical_section_title: Lambeosaurus / History and species / Early discoveries and names
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: Hunting dinosaurs in the bad lands of the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada; a sequel to The life of a fossil hunter Identifier: cu31924012130021 (find matches) Year: 1917 (1910s) Authors: Sternberg, Charles H. (Charles Hazelius), b. 1850 Subjects: Paleontology; Dinosaurs Publisher: Lawrence, Kan. , C. H. Sternberg Contributing Library: Cornell University Library Digitizing Sponsor: MSN View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ' Text Appearing After Image: ' Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Lambeosaurus is a genus of hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived about 75 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period of North America. This bipedal/quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaur is known for its distinctive hollow cranial crest, which in the best-known species resembled a hatchet. Several possible species have been named, from Canada, the United States, and Mexico, but only the two Canadian species are currently recognized as valid.
  Material relevant to the genus was first named by Lawrence Lambe in 1902. Over twenty years later, the modern name was coined in 1923 by William Parks, in honour of Lambe, based on better preserved specimens. The genus has a complicated taxonomic history, in part because small-bodied crested hadrosaurids now recognized as juveniles were once thought to belong to their own genera and species. Currently, the various skulls assigned to the type species L. lambei are interpreted as showing age differences and sexual dimorphism. Lambeosaurus was closely related to the better known Corythosaurus, which is found in slightly older rocks, as well as the less well-known genera Hypacrosaurus and Olorotitan.
context_section_description: Lambeosaurus has a complicated taxonomic history, beginning in 1902 with Lawrence Lambe's naming of hadrosaurid limb material and other bones (originally GSC 419) from Alberta as Trachodon marginatus. In the same publication Trachodon altidens, a left upper jaw (GSC 1092) from the Dinosaur Park Formation was also described by Lambe. In the same volume, Henry Fairfield Osborn suggested T. altidens could belong to a new genus, which he labelled "Didanodon" without further discussion.
  Paleontologists began finding better remains of hadrosaurids from the same rocks in the 1910s, in what is now known as the late Campanian-age (Upper Cretaceous) Dinosaur Park Formation. Lambe assigned two new skulls to T. marginatus, and based on the new information, coined the genus Stephanosaurus for the species in 1914. Unfortunately, there was very little to associate the skulls with the scrappy earlier marginatus material, so in 1923 William Parks proposed a new genus and species for the skulls, with both generic and specific names honoring Lambe (who had died four years earlier): Lambeosaurus lambei (type specimen NMC 2869, originally GSC 2869). In the same publication, this species was made the type genus of the new subfamily Lambeosaurinae, as a replacement for the pre-existed Stephanosaurinae.
caption: L. lambei skull being excavated in Alberta, Canada
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