''Rhinorex'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of kritosaurin

hadrosaur Hadrosaurids (), or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod family, which incl ...

from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

Neslen Formation, in central

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

. Its exact placement in time is uncertain, though it probably dates to 75 million years ago and was discovered in estuarine sediments. T.A. Gates & R. Scheetz (2014): A new saurolophine hadrosaurid (Dinosauria: Ornithopoda) from the Campanian of Utah, North America
''Journal of Systematic Palaeontology''. doi: 10.1080/14772019.2014.950614 It is likely a close relative of ''

Gryposaurus ''Gryposaurus'' (meaning "hooked-nosed (Greek ''grypos'') lizard"; sometimes incorrectly translated as "griffin (Latin ''gryphus'') lizard") was a genus of duckbilled dinosaur that lived about 80 to 75 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceo ...

'', and indeed some have suggested that it falls within the genus ''Gryposaurus'', as the

phylogenetic analysis In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

indicates. It is found in a very similar time and place as ''Gryposaurus monumentensis'' and ''Gryposaurus'' sp. This would challenge the idea of provincialism in Late Cretaceous

Laramidia Laramidia was an island continent that existed during the Late Cretaceous period (99.6–66 Ma), when the Western Interior Seaway split the continent of North America in two. In the Mesozoic era, Laramidia was an island land mass separated from A ...

n faunas. It may be that ''Rhinorex'' lived in more coastal environments than ''Gryposaurus''. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

specimen BYU 13258 is composed of a partial but mostly articulated skeleton, which includes the skull, the vertebral column and a partial pelvis.

Etymology

The type and only valid

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

known is ''Rhinorex condrupus''. The genus name is derived from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

word "rhinos" which means "nose", and the Latin word "rex" which means "king." The specific name is derived from the Latin word "condo" which means "bury" and refers to the specimen being buried in rock and the Latin word "rupes" which means "cliffs" and is a reference to the fossil being discovered in the Book Cliffs of Utah.

References

Saurolophines Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America Fossil taxa described in 2014 Paleontology in Utah Campanian genus first appearances Campanian genus extinctions Ornithischian genera {{ornithopod-stub

Etymology

See also

References