Dinosaurs / Cretaceous / Pararhabdodon
Pararhabdodon
Cretaceous pah-rah-RAB-doh-don, “near Rhabdodon”
Pararhabdodon was a medium-sized duck-billed dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of what is now northeastern Spain. Measuring around five to six metres in length, it inhabited an island environment within the European archipelago shortly before the mass extinction event. When first described, its fragmentary fossils were thought to belong to a rhabdodontid ornithopod, which inspired its name, but later discoveries revealed it was actually an advanced lambeosaurine hadrosaur related to Tsintaosaurus. It possessed dental batteries capable of pulverising fibrous vegetation and probably carried a modest hollow cranial crest used for display and sound resonance. Its presence in southern Europe highlights dynamic faunal interchanges between Asia and the European islands during the terminal Cretaceous.
It represents one of the very few hollow-crested lambeosaurines known from the Late Cretaceous European archipelago.
Where and when
Pararhabdodon lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 68 to 66 million years ago (Maastrichtian age). Its remains come from Spain, in the Tremp Formation.
The numbers
Length 5.5 m (estimates run from 5 to 6 m). Mass about 1.9 t. Hip height about 2 m. That is 3.2 human-lengths, or 0.49 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from partial skeleton; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, first ma, last ma, hip height.