Standing over three meters (more than 10 feet) tall at the hips and
measuring approximately nine meters (31 feet) in length, the Late Cretaceous
lambeosaur Corythosaurus casuarius was discovered in 1914 by famed
dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown, then working for the American Museum of Natural
History in New York. The nearly-complete skeleton on which the genus is based
clearly shows patches of skin, thin and covered by small polygon-shaped bumps;
parallel rows of larger scutes (up to 1.5 inches in length) can be found on the
skin surface of the lower abdomen near the pelvis. Multiple species of
Corythosaurus were named in the years following its discovery, but
a more contemporary analysis of these specimens relegates them to the roles of
females and juveniles, each with differently-shaped crests than the "male" type
specimen. Corythosaurus is closely related to -- and is possibly
even the same genus as -- Hypacrosaurus;
it is likely that the former is directly ancestral to the latter.
Illustration © 1995/2000 Brian Franczak
Text © 1998 Brian
Franczak
