Edmontosaurus & Pteranodon

  

Edmontosaurus & Pteranodon

Edmontosaurus was possibly the largest Hadrosaur to ever live.  Hadrosaur means duck-billed dinosaur.  There is some evidence from partial skeleton remains (at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman Montana) that one species of Edmontosaurs may have reached up to 49 feet or 15 meters long. . . and weighing up to 10 tons, or 9.04 metric tons.  To see how big this is you need to compare Edmontosaurus to its primary predator:  Tyrannosaurus rex.  T. rex was up to 40 feet or 12.3 meters long... and most paleontologists place it at a maximum weight of 15.4 tons or 14 metric tons.  So Edmontosaurus was longer but lighter than T. rex.

Edmontosaurus and T. rex Size Comparison
Notice that Edmontosaurus is longer but built much lighter than T. rex

Edmontosaurus was named after Edmonton, a city in southern Alberta Canada.    Paelontologists have found several specimens of Edmontosaurus.  Some included skin or scale impressions, and even some gut contents.  On a side note, in some Hadrosaur coprolite... coprolite is fossilized dung... they have found 5 species of grass seed.  This indicates that there is solid evidence for grass evolving and diversifying much sooner than was previously thought.  Ever since I learned that three years ago I started to include grass in my drawings of dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Period.

I want to point out that there IS a reason I drew the Pteranodon black on the underside...maybe even black on top.  We are quite certain that most if not all Pterosaurs were fish eaters.  What if there was a species of Pteranodon that specialized in fishing at night.  IF that were the case, then a dark underside would be an evolutionary advantage and a natural selection adaptation.  I decided that the top drawing on today's entry is of an Edmontosaurus just getting up after a long night's sleep and a Pternanodon flying home... to that nearby cliff...after a successful night of fishing.

I decided to draw another size comarison drawing of T. rex and Edmontosaurus.  The T. rex is maybe not worried about killing the Edmontosaurus and the Edmontosaurus is not worried about being killed and eaten...because both dinosaurs are more worried about the roaring sound and the bright light from the flaming meteorite that is about to hit the Earth and kill them both off.  The Edmontosaurus is about to make a hard left turn away from both the meteorite and the T. rex.

Edmontosaurus & T. rex running from the Doomsday Meteorite

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