Kritosaurus

*Kritosaurus navajovius*

***Kritosaurus*** (meaning "separated lizard"; sometimes misinterpreted as "noble lizard", in reference to the presumed "Roman nose"; the nasal region was fragmented, disarticulated, and originally restored flat) is an incompletely known but historically important genus of extinct hadrosaurid (duckbilled) dinosaur. It lived about 73 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous of North and possibly South America. Its taxonomic history is convoluted, also incorporating *Gryposaurus*, *Anasazisaurus*, and *Naashoibitosaurus*; this tangle will remain unresolved until better remains of *Kritosaurus* are described. Despite the dearth of material, this herbivore appeared in dinosaur books until the 1990s, although what was usually represented was the much more completely known *Gryposaurus*, then thought to be a synonym.

## Description

*Kritosaurus* is only definitely determined from a partial skull and lower jaws, and associated undescribed postcranial remains. The greater portion of the muzzle and upper beak are missing, but additional reconstruction in the early 2000s using fragments from the skull that had not been placed before show part of a crest in front of the eyes; the form of the crest is unknown at this point. The length of the skull is estimated at 87 centimeters (34 in) from the tip of the upper beak to the base of the quadrate that articulates with the lower jaw at the back of the skull. Potential diagnostic characteristics of *Kritosaurus* include a predentary (lower beak) without tooth-like crenulations, a sharp downward bend to the lower jaws near the beak, and a heavy, somewhat rectangular maxilla (upper tooth-bearing bone). If it turns out to be the same as *Anasazisaurus* or *Naashoibitosaurus*, then the form of the complete crest is that of a tab or flange beginning in front of the eyes and rising between and above them, but not extended beyond them.

## Classification

*Kritosaurus* was a hadrosaurine hadrosaurid, a flat-headed or solid-crested duckbill. Because it is poorly known, its closest relatives are not yet known. *Naashoibitosaurus* and "K." *australis*, both of which appear to be very similar, form a clade with *Saurolophus* in the most recent review of duckbill phylogeny. In the same work, *Kritosaurus* is confusingly considered both as distinct at the species level and as a dubious name. Location and time separate *Kritosaurus* and the slightly older, primarily Canadian *Gryposaurus*, along with some cranial details.

## Discovery and history

In 1904, Barnum Brown discovered the type specimen (**AMNH 5799**) of *Kritosaurus* near Ojo Alamo, San Juan County, New Mexico, United States, while following up on a previous expedition. He initially could not definitely correlate the stratigraphy, but by 1916 was able to establish it as from what is now known as the late Campanian-age De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation. When discovered, much of the front of the skull had either eroded or fragmented, and Brown reconstructed this portion after what is now called *Anatotitan*, leaving out many fragments. However, he had noticed that something was different about the fragments, but ascribed the differences to crushing. He initially wanted to name it *Nectosaurus*, but found out that this name was already in use; Jan Versluys, who'd visited Brown before the change, inadvertently leaked the previous choice. He kept the species name, though, leading to the combination *K. navajovius*.

The 1914 publication of the arch-snouted Canadian genus *Gryposaurus* changed Brown's mind about the anatomy of his dinosaur's snout. Going back through the fragments, he revised the previous reconstruction and gave it a *Gryposaurus*-like arched nasal crest. He also synonymized *Gryposaurus* with *Kritosaurus*, a move supported by Charles Gilmore. This synonymy was used through the 1920s (William Parks's designation of a Canadian species as *Kritosaurus incurvimanus*) and became standard after the publication of Richard Swann Lull and Nelda Wright's influential 1942 monograph on North American hadrosaurids. From this time until 1990, *Kritosaurus* would be composed of at least the type species *K. navajovius*, *K. incurvimanus*, and *K. notabilis*, the former type species of *Gryposaurus*. The poorly known species *Hadrosaurus breviceps* (Marsh, 1889), known from a dentary from the Campanian-age Judith River Formation of Montana, was also assigned to *Kritosaurus* by Lull and Wright, but this is no longer accepted.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, *Hadrosaurus* had entered the discussion as a possible synonym of either *Kritosaurus*, *Gryposaurus*, or both, particularly in semi-technical "dinosaur dictionaries". One well-known work, David B. Norman's *The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs*, uses *Kritosaurus* for the Canadian material (*Gryposaurus*), but confusingly identifies the mounted skeleton of *K. incurvimanus* as *Hadrosaurus*. One more species was added to *Kritosaurus* in these years. In 1984, Argentine paleontologist José Bonaparte and colleagues named *K. australis* for hadrosaur bones from the late Campanian-early Maastrichtian Los Alamitos Formation of Rio Negro, Patagonia, Argentina. This species has been problematic and may not belong in *Kritosaurus*, as suggested by the reviews in both editions of *The Dinosauria*.

The history of *Kritosaurus* took another turn in 1990, when Jack Horner and David B. Weishampel once again separated *Gryposaurus*, citing the uncertainty associated with the latter's partial skull. Horner in 1992 described two more skulls from New Mexico that he claimed belonged to *Kritosaurus* and showed that it was quite different from *Gryposaurus*, but the following year Adrian Hunt and Spencer G. Lucas put each skull in its own genus, creating *Anasazisaurus* and *Naashoibitosaurus*. Not all authors have agreed with this, Thomas E. Williamson in particular defending Horner's original interpretation. At least two recent publications have upheld the different genera, for now.

Finally, the geographic range of potential *Kritosaurus* remains in North America has expanded. Bones from the late Campanian-age Aguja Formation of Texas, including a skull, have been found. Additionally, newly-described remains from Coahuila, Mexico may represent a new species, one about 20% larger than *K. navajovius* (around 11 meters [36 ft] long) and with a distinctively curved ischium. This animal would be the largest known well-documented North American hadrosaurine. Unfortunately, the nasal bones are also incomplete in the skull remains from this material.

## Paleoecology

*Kritosaurus* was discovered in the De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation. This formation dates from the late Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous Period (74 to 70 million years ago), and is also the source of several other dinosaurs, like *Alamosaurus*, a species of *Parasaurolophus*, *Pentaceratops*, *Nodocephalosaurus*, *Saurornitholestes*, and as-yet-unnamed tyrannosaurids. The Kirtland Formation is interpreted as river floodplains appearing after a retreat of the Western Interior Seaway. Conifers were the dominant plants, and chasmosaurine horned dinosaurs appear to have been more common than hadrosaurids.

## Paleobiology

### Diet and feeding

As a hadrosaurid, *Kritosaurus* would have been a large bipedal/quadrupedal herbivore, eating plants with a sophisticated skull that permitted a grinding motion analogous to chewing. Its teeth were continually replacing and packed into dental batteries that contained hundreds of teeth, only a relative handful of which were in use at any time. Plant material would have been cropped by its broad beak, and held in the jaws by a cheek-like organ. Feeding would have been from the ground up to ~4 meters (13 ft) above. If it was a separate genus, how it would have partitioned resources with the similar and contemporaneous *Naashoibitosaurus* is unknown.

### Nasal crest

The nasal crest of *Kritosaurus*, whatever its true form, may have been used for a variety of social functions, such as identification of sexes or species and social ranking. There may have been inflatable air sacs flanking it for both visual and auditory signaling.

## JPInstitute.com Description

Kritosaurus was a duck-billed dinosaur with a rounded hump in front of its eyes. However, since only part of a skull has been found, it is hard to say what it really looked like. It is possible that it is an already named hadrosaur. It would have been a typical member of the hadrosaur family, feeding on plants, traveling in herds, and nesting together to protect its babies.

Because so little of this dinosaur has been discovered, some scientists feel it may be a misidentified Gryposaurus or Hadrosaurus.

## Links

https://web.archive.org/web/20040214164828fw\_/http://www.jpinstitute.com/dinopedia/dinocards/dc\_krito.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20080513074111/http://kids.yahoo.com/dinosaurs/284--Kritosaurus

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