Edmontosaurus Dinosaur Facts

Edmontosaurus is a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, among the best known and most intensely studied. The fossils of this dinosaur abound and some mummified specimens have even been found with preserved skin which allows to know the texture, largely leather-like. The true color of Edmontosaurus remains however a guessing game.

Like all other hadrosaurs, Edmontosaurus was a herbivore and fed mainly on pine needles, cones and twigs. By analyzing the stomach contents of some specimens, researchers found hard conifer needles and seeds.

Typical Ornithopod

Ornithopod Edmontosaurus

Edmontosaurus has the typical look of an ornithopod: a very rigid tail held horizontally, a voluminous torso, hind legs much longer and thicker than fore legs, a duckbill and thousands of grinding teeth located in the cheeks that allowed this dinosaur to crush its food.

With a weight of 3.5 tons and a length of 13 meters, Edmontosaurus was relatively massive but much thinner than the Triceratops with which it shared the plains of Saskatchewan in the late Cretaceous years, just before the massive Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. One might think that just like the Triceratops, Edmontosaurus, without any means to defend itself, had to be a prefered prey for large theropods such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and Albertosaurus.

Seasonal migration

Like other ornithopod hadrosaurs in the same genus - eg Maiasaura - Edmontosaurus probably lived in herds and migrated seasonally for thousands of miles around, from northern Alaska to the plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan which were green and rich in vegetation during the winter months. Fossils belonging to Edmontosaurus and found throughout this trajectory support this theory.

Fossils

Many fossils have been found in many parts of North America and all date from the Cretaceous period. Thus, Edmontosaurus is known to inhabit South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, New Jersey, Alberta and Saskatchewan. The name Edmontosaurus was officially granted in 1917 by Lawrence M. Lambe on the basis of a fossil discovered in the Edmonton Rock Formation in Alberta, Canada. Anatosaurus, another duckbill dinosaur, is actually a juvenile specimen of Edmontosaurus.