Hypacrosaurus
Hypacrosaurus is an extinct genus of duckbill dinosaur similar in appearance to Corythosaurus. Like Corythosaurus, it had a tall, hollow rounded crest, although not as large and straight. It is known from the remains of two species that spanned 75.0 to 69.5 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous of Alberta, Canada, and Montana, United States, and is the latest hollow-crested duckbill known from good remains in North America. It was an obscure genus until the discovery in 1987 of nests, eggs, and hatchlings belonging to H. stebingeri in the Bear Paw Formation.

Etemenanki3 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 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
- CorythosauriniPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ornithopoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Length
- 9 mWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
37 occurrences of Hypacrosaurus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
37 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
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
5 formations
- Two Medicine Formation · Montana Group15
- Horseshoe Canyon Formation · Edmonton Group11
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group2
- Two Medicine Formation · Montana Group1
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group1
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The named rock units Hypacrosaurus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 7 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Hypacrosaurus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Hypacrosaurus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
112 taxa- Ankylosauridae5 sites
- Cyclurus5 sites
- Holostei5 sites
- Anura4 sites
- Avialae4 sites
- Coriops4 sites
- Opisthotriton4 sites
- Paronychodon4 sites
- Scapherpeton4 sites
- Theropoda4 sites
- Tyrannosauridae4 sites
- Acanthomorphata3 sites
- Ceratopsia3 sites
- Ceratopsidae3 sites
- Champsosaurus3 sites
- Chelydridae3 sites
- Hadrosauridae3 sites
- Metatheria3 sites
- Myledaphus3 sites
- Nodosauridae3 sites
- Ornithomimidae3 sites
- Richardoestesia3 sites
- Troodon3 sites
- Troodon formosus3 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 36 sites for Hypacrosaurus, 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
12 references- Embryonic and neonatal morphology and ontogeny of a new species of Hypacrosaurus (Ornithischia, Lambeosauridae) from Montana and Alberta13
- Faunal assemblages from the upper Horseshoe Canyon Formation, an early Maastrichtian cool-climate assemblage from Alberta, with special reference to the Albertosaurus sarcophagus bonebed5
- A new trachodont dinosaur, Hypacrosaurus, from the Edmonton Cretaceous of Alberta4
- Hadrosaurian dinosaurs of North America3
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections2
- Fossil Vertebrate Collections2
- On the skull and skeleton of Hypacrosaurus, a helmet-crested dinosaur from the Edmonton Cretaceous of Alberta2
- On Cheneosaurus tolmanensis, a new genus and species of trachodont dinosaur from the Edmonton Cretaceous of Alberta2
- Cranial morphology and variation in Hypacrosaurus stebingeri (Ornithischia: Hadrosauridae)1
- Kazaklambia convincens comb. nov., a primitive juvenile lambeosaurine from the Santonian of Kazakhstan1
- A sub-adult skull of Hypacrosaurus stebingeri (Ornithischia: Lambeosaurinae): anatomy and comparison1
- Notes on the biostratigraphy of dinosaurian and microfossil faunas in the Edmonton Formation (Cretaceous), Alberta1
Each of the 37 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. 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 content1
Picture of Hypacrosaurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Etemenanki3
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Hypacrosaurus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
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 itCorythosaurini through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Brown 1913