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'Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus' — a chewing machine

Object Description

‘Tsintaosaurus spinorhinus’ belonged to the group ornithopod dinosaurs which mostly moved on two legs, although larger species probably walked and browsed on all fours. They had a horny beak for picking off plants and very effective teeth for chewing.  Its name (sin-tow-saw-rus) means Tsintao lizard.

The fossils of ‘Tsintaosaurus’ were discovered in China. ‘Tsintaosaurus’ lived 83–71 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous and was a herbivore measuring 10 metres.

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Educational Value Statement

'Tsintaosaurus' was a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, found in China. Like all hadrosaurs it had a toothless ‘bill’ and a massive battery of grinding teeth that were replaced as they wore down. This was important, as 'Tsintaosaurus' would have eaten a variety of tough foliage, such as conifers and cycads. 'Tsintaosaurus' was able to move on two or four legs, and generally browsed on plants closer to the ground than high in trees.

Many hadrosaurs had elaborate crests on their heads, and 'Tsintaosaurus' seems to have been no exception. Palaeontologists have puzzled over its unusual forward-pointing ‘horn’ for years. The discoverer of the species in the 1950s described the protrusion as a ‘nasal tube’, but later researchers thought the fossilisation process might have distorted the skull. They suggested that 'Tsintaosaurus' may have had a backward-pointing horn, like the related 'Saurolophus', or not have had a ‘horn’ at all. Current thinking has accepted the presence of the horn, although it is thought that it wasn’t used to produce bellowing or honking sounds, as the horn is not hollow like that of some hadrosaur crests.

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