Name:
Appalachiosaurus (Greek for "Appalachia lizard"); pronounced ah-pah-LAY-chee-oh-SORE-us
Habitat:
Swamps of North America
Historical Period:
Late Cretaceous (75 million years ago)
Size and Weight:
About 25 feet long and two tons
Diet:
Herbivorous dinosaurs
Distinguishing Characteristics:
Narrow snout with six crests; stunted arms
About Appalachiosaurus:
It's not often that dinosaurs are dug up in the southeastern U.S., so the discovery in 2005 of Appalachiosaurus was big news. The fossil, believed to be of a juvenile, measured about 23 feet long, and the dinosaur that left it probably weighed a bit less than a ton. Abstracting from other tyrannosaurs, paleontologists believe a full-grown adult might have measured about 25 feet long and weighed two tons.
Weirdly, Appalachiosaurus shares a distinctive feature--a series of ridges on its snout--with an Asian tyrannosaur, Alioramus. However, experts believe Appalachiosaurus is most closely related to another North American predator, the even larger Albertosaurus.
