Claosaurus the broken Duck-billed Dinosaur coloring page

 Hi there!  Welcome to my free coloring pages blog!

This new drawing is of a duck-billed dinosaur that doesn't quite fit the mold. 

Claosaurus the Broken Duck-billed Dinosaur

(I accidentally posted the wrong drawing here.  This is the correct drawing of Claosaurus.)

Claosaurus was kind of a Hadrosaur or Duck-billed dinosaur  It had traits of a Hadrosaur but just wasn't quite like the others.  It seemed to be a lot like the early duck-billed predecessors to the later duck-billed dinosaurs.  Yet it lived at the end of the Cretaceous.  It seems that it could NOT be an ancestor of the later Hadrosaurs... because it lived with them.  

Maybe it is just a less evolved version of the basal or early duck-billed like dinosaurs that lived before the true duck-billed Hadrosaurs.  I suppose that its lineage survived with little change for much of the Cretaceous Period.  

Claosaurus grew to be only 11 1/2 feet or 3 1/2 meters long.  This is much smaller than the big true Hadrosaurs that it shared North America with.  In fact, some of those were closer to 40 feet long. 

Another weird fact is that fossilized bones of Claosaurus have been found in marine sediments.  So apparently they liked hanging out near or on the beach.  Maybe they got washed out to sea during tsunami events.   The late Cretaceous WAS very volcanic and probably earthquake prone... and the drawing does show a volcano erupting.  

The grass tells you that this IS the late Cretaceous.  There WAS grass then.  In fact, coprolite or fossilized Hadrosaur dung has been found with up to 5 different species of grass seed.  This indicates that grass had already evolved and begun to diversify BEFORE dinosaurs went extinct.  This also tells you that some late Cretaceous Hadrosaurs were grazers and DID eat grass.  They may have also eaten shrubs or tree leaves... which makes them browsers.  In the drawing, the Claosaurus is browsing on cycad leaves. 

The name Cloasaurus means "broken lizard."  This has to do with the bones when first found many many years ago being broken up into pieces.  This dino was found and named by Othniel Charles Marsh in 1890.  So we've known about it for 131 years!  

NOTE:  To find this drawing in printable form just click on the "Paleontology" button and scroll to the bottom of the drop-down menu.   

Anatotitan with Ptetanodon

(This is Anatotitan and it was up to 40 feet long.  Much bigger than Claosaurus.)