Question 1

How do you say Lambeosaurus?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus is pronounced lam-BEE-oh-SORE-us. Break it into four parts: LAM, then BEE, then oh, then SORE-us. The stress lands hardest on the BEE and SORE syllables. It's named after a Canadian scientist named Lambe, which is why the first part sounds like his name.

Question 2

What does Lambeosaurus mean?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus means Lambe's lizard. It was named in 1923 by paleontologist William Parks to honor Lawrence Morris Lambe, a pioneering Canadian dinosaur hunter who had collected the very fossils Parks was describing. The ending saurus comes from the Greek word for lizard and is used in the names of hundreds of dinosaurs.

Question 3

How big was Lambeosaurus?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus was about 30 to 40 feet long and weighed around 11,000 to 13,000 pounds. That makes it roughly as long as a city bus and heavier than two adult African elephants. A related species from Baja California that was reclassified as Magnapaulia in 2012 may have reached 56 feet, which would make it one of the largest plant-eating dinosaurs ever found.

Question 4

What did Lambeosaurus eat?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus was a herbivore, meaning it only ate plants. It used its wide, flat, toothless beak to crop vegetation and then passed the food back to an enormous dental battery containing up to 1,400 closely packed teeth for grinding. It likely ate ferns, flowering plants, and the leaves and branches of conifers and other trees that grew in its floodplain habitat.

Question 5

What was the crest on Lambeosaurus's head for?

Accepted Answer

Scientists believe the hollow hatchet-shaped crest on Lambeosaurus's head served at least two purposes. First, it likely worked like a resonating chamber to amplify and produce low foghorn-like calls for communication within the herd. Second, the crest was probably brightly colored and used as a visual signal for recognizing other members of the same species, attracting mates, or signaling social status, similar to how modern birds use colorful crests and plumage.

Question 6

When did Lambeosaurus live?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 76.5 to 72.2 million years ago. That is about 10 to 14 million years before the asteroid impact that wiped out all non-bird dinosaurs 66 million years ago. It shared its world with other famous dinosaurs like Gorgosaurus, Corythosaurus, and Centrosaurus.

Question 7

Where did Lambeosaurus live?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus lived in what is now western North America, including Alberta in Canada, Montana in the United States, and possibly as far south as Baja California in Mexico. Its fossils are most commonly found in the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, one of the richest dinosaur fossil sites in the world. At the time, this region was a warm, low-lying coastal plain next to a vast inland sea.

Question 8

Who discovered Lambeosaurus?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus was formally named by Canadian paleontologist William A. Parks in 1923. However, the fossils had been collected earlier by Lawrence Morris Lambe, the man the dinosaur was named after. Parks sorted out a case of mistaken identity where Lambe had assigned the skull to the wrong genus before his death in 1919, and Parks set the record straight by creating the new name Lambeosaurus in Lambe's honor.

Question 9

Was Lambeosaurus dangerous?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus was a plant-eater and posed no hunting threat to other animals. However, an animal weighing up to 13,000 pounds is never completely harmless. It could potentially kick, swing its heavy tail, or simply charge to defend itself or its young. Its main survival strategy was almost certainly living in herds, using early warning from many sets of eyes and ears to detect predators like Gorgosaurus before they got too close.

Question 10

How many teeth did Lambeosaurus have?

Accepted Answer

Lambeosaurus had a dental battery that could contain up to approximately 1,400 teeth packed tightly together in multiple rows. These teeth were not all in use at the same time, but they were constantly being replaced as old ones wore down. This continuous tooth replacement is called polyphyodonty, and it meant Lambeosaurus always had fresh grinding surfaces available for processing tough vegetation.

Question 11

Is Lambeosaurus related to Parasaurolophus?

Accepted Answer

Yes, Lambeosaurus and Parasaurolophus are close relatives. Both belong to the family Hadrosauridae and the subfamily Lambeosaurinae, the crested hadrosaurs. Lambeosaurus is actually the animal the subfamily is named after. Other close relatives include Corythosaurus and Hypacrosaurus. All of these dinosaurs shared the characteristic of hollow crests that could be used for communication.

Question 12

Could Lambeosaurus run fast?

Accepted Answer

Scientists estimate that large hadrosaurs like Lambeosaurus could reach speeds of around 25 to 28 miles per hour in short bursts when running on two legs. That is roughly as fast as an average human sprints. While not the fastest dinosaur, Lambeosaurus was large enough that this speed, combined with herd awareness, gave it a real fighting chance against predators like Gorgosaurus in open terrain.

Question 13

What does the crest of Lambeosaurus look like compared to other hadrosaurs?

Accepted Answer

The crest of Lambeosaurus is shaped like a hatchet or a rounded ax blade, jutting forward and upward from the top of the skull. This sets it apart from Parasaurolophus, which had a long swept-back tube-like crest, and Corythosaurus, which had a round helmet-shaped crest. Scientists believe the different crest shapes helped different hadrosaur species recognize each other and may have produced distinctly different sounds.

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