page_title: Camarasaurus
section_title: Paleofauna
hierarchical_section_title: Camarasaurus / Paleoecology / Paleofauna
caption_attribution_description: English: Camarasaurus mount. On display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Alberta, Canada.
context_page_description: Camarasaurus was a genus of quadrupedal, herbivorous dinosaurs. It was the most common of the giant sauropods to be found in North America. Its fossil remains have been found in the Morrison Formation of Colorado and Utah, dating to the Late Jurassic epoch, between 155 and 145 million years ago.
  Camarasaurus presented a distinctive cranial profile of a blunt snout and an arched skull that was remarkably square. It likely travelled in herds, or at least in family groups.
  The name means "chambered lizard", referring to the hollow chambers in its vertebrae.
context_section_description: The Morrison Formation records an environment and time dominated by gigantic sauropod dinosaurs such as Barosaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Brachiosaurus. Dinosaurs living alongside Camarasaurus included the herbivorous ornithischians Camptosaurus, Gargoyleosaurus, Dryosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Othnielosaurus. Predators in this paleoenvironment included the theropods Saurophaganax, Torvosaurus, Ceratosaurus, Marshosaurus, Stokesosaurus, Ornitholestes, and Allosaurus, which accounted for up to 75% of theropod specimens, and was at the top trophic level of the Morrison food web. Camarasaurus is commonly found at the same sites as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Diplodocus.
  Other organisms in this region included bivalves, snails, ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial and aquatic crocodylomorphans, and several species of pterosaurs such as Harpactognathus and Mesadactylus. Early mammals present were docodonts (such as Docodon), multituberculates, symmetrodonts, and triconodonts. The flora of the period has been revealed by fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers. Vegetation varied from river-lining forests of tree ferns, and ferns (gallery forests), to fern savannas with occasional trees such as the Araucaria-like conifer Brachyphyllum.
caption: Skeleton on display, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology
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