Lophorhothon atopus
Lophorhothon is a genus of hadrosauroid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Alabama, and possibly Georgia and North Carolina. It was the first dinosaur genus discovered in Alabama, in the United States.

Albert Prieto-Márquez, Gregory M. Erickson, Jun A. Ebersole · CC BY 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
- LophorhothonPBDB
- Diet
- herbivorePBDB, for Ornithopoda
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, gregariousPBDB, for Ornithischia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Ornithischia
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Ornithischia
Time the record covers
At most 14 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 85.7 Mya and 72.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Lophorhothon atopus 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
2 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
1 formation
- Mooreville Chalk Formation · Selma Group2
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The named rock units Lophorhothon atopus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Lophorhothon atopus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Lophorhothon atopus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Cimolichthys nepaholica1 site
- Clidastes propython1 site
- Nodosauridae1 site
- Protosphyraena1 site
- Protostega gigas1 site
- Toxochelys moorevillensis1 site
- Xiphactinus audax1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Lophorhothon atopus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- A redescription of Lophorhothon atopus (Ornithopoda: Dinosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Alabama based on new material1
- The vertebrate fauna of the Selma Formation of Alabama. Part VI. The dinosaurs1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Lophorhothon atopus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Albert Prieto-Márquez, Gregory M. Erickson, Jun A. Ebersole
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lophorhothon atopus 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 itLophorhothon through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Langston 1960