Anatotitan

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Anatotitan
Fossil range: Late Cretaceous
Anatotitan copei at the American Museum of Natural History, New York
Anatotitan copei at the American Museum of Natural History, New York
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Superorder: Dinosauria
Order: Ornithischia
Family: Hadrosauridae
Subfamily: Hadrosaurinae
Tribe: Edmontosaurini
Genus: Anatotitan
Chapman & Brett-Surman, 1990
Species
  • A. copei (type)
  • A. longiceps (Marsh, 1897) Olshevsky, 1991

Anatotitan (which means "duck titan") was a type of dinosaur called a hadrosaur. It did not have a crest unlike its later relative, Parasaurolophus. An Anatotitan grows to be 12 meters long. Its fossils have been found in South Dakota and Montana. One of the skulls found measured nearly 1.2 meters long. The "duckbill" part of its muzzle is almost as wide as its head, which makes it larger than any another hadrosaur. There are two species of Anatotitan, A. copei and A. longiceps.

Anatotitan was first discovered in 1882 by paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope and was named Trachodon mirabilis. Another hadrosaur discovered in 1892 was named Claosaurus annectens by Othniel Charles Marsh. In 1942, two paleontologists decided that C. annectens belonged in its own genus, called Annatosaurus, and renamed C. annectens A. annectens. T. mirabilis was renamed A. copei. Many paleontologists now think Annatosaurus is actually Edmontosaurus, while others think it belongs in another genus called Anatotitan.

Anatotitan was shown in the movie When Dinosaurs Roamed America and the television series Walking with Dinosaurs.