Camptosaurus
Camptosaurus is an extinct genus of plant-eating, beaked ornithischian dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic period of western North America and possibly also Europe. The name means 'flexible lizard'.

★Kumiko★ · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- AnkylopollexiaPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ornithopoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Length
- 5 mWikidata
Time the record covers
At least 3 million years on record.
The record covers at least 152.21 Mya to 149.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 157.9 Mya to 143.1 Mya.
42 occurrences of Camptosaurus on record, most of them in the Late Jurassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
42 occurrences- Late Jurassic100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
3 formations
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The named rock units Camptosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Camptosaurus and its relatives
Late JurassicWhere Camptosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Jurassic.
Found in the same rock
222 taxa- Camarasaurus23 sites
- Stegosaurus19 sites
- Diplodocus16 sites
- Allosaurus15 sites
- Apatosaurus14 sites
- Barosaurus10 sites
- Glyptops9 sites
- Allosaurus fragilis8 sites
- Goniopholis8 sites
- Sauropoda8 sites
- Brachiosaurus7 sites
- Ceratosaurus7 sites
- Theropoda7 sites
- Diplodocidae6 sites
- Diplodocinae6 sites
- Dryosaurus5 sites
- Ornithopoda5 sites
- Stegosaurus stenops5 sites
- Actinopterygii4 sites
- Coelurus fragilis4 sites
- Dinochelys whitei4 sites
- Dryosaurus altus4 sites
- Mammalia4 sites
- Nanosaurus agilis4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 36 sites for Camptosaurus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
31 references- Biostratigraphy of dinosaurs in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of the Western Interior, U.S.A.5
- Paleoecological analysis of the vertebrate fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain region, U.S.A.3
- Osteology of the armored Dinosauria in the United States National Museum, with special reference to the genus Stegosaurus3
- Stratigraphy and sedimentology of the Morrison Formation in the western panhandle of Oklahoma with reference to the historical Stovall dinosaur quarries2
- Osteology of the Jurassic reptile Camptosaurus, with a revision of the genus, and descriptions of two new species2
- The typical Ornithopoda of the American Jurassic2
- Upper Jurassic tidal flat megatracksites of Germany—coastal dinosaur migration highways between European islands, and a review of the dinosaur footprints1
- A New Basal Diplodocoid Species, Amphicoelias brontodiplodocus from the Morrison Formation, Big Horn Basin, Wyoming, with Taxonomic Reevaluation of Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Barosaurus and Other Genera1
- A new species of Camptosaurus (Ornithopoda: Dinosauria) from the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic) of Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, and a biomechanical analysis of Its forelimb1
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections1
- Historical update: paleontological excavation in the Como Region1
- Marsh's Dinosaurs: The Collections from Como Bluff1
Each of the 42 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 19 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Camptosaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ★Kumiko★
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Camptosaurus sp. · umnh:vp:16482
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Hutchings Museum
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
This entry was cached before the site began recording what Smithsonian Open Access did, so a search that failed cannot be told from one that found nothing.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAnkylopollexia through timeFormations of the Late JurassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Marsh 1885