Pronunciation: KRIT-oh-SOR-us
Meaning: Separated lizard
Author/s: Brown (1910)
Synonyms: See below
First Discovery: New Mexico, USA
Acta Ordinal: #96
Kritosaurus navajovius
Before Barnum Brown described Kritosaurus, he had been calling it Nectosaurus, and that name was inadvertently leaked in a paper by Dutch geologist Jan Versluys, who had visited Brown in the early 1900s. As it happens, Nectosaurus was already occupied by a marine reptile named by John Merriam in 1905, so Brown coined Kritosaurus for official publication in 1910 and rebuilt its missing snout in the flat, ducky vision of what would become known as Anatotitan. Six years later, it received a facelift. Literally.
In 1916, Kritosaurus was restored with an arched snout, an idea Brown had nicked from Lambe's Gryposaurus, but by this point, he was already convinced that the pair were the same creature. After the 1942 publication of Lull and Wright's hadrosaur monograph, Gryposaurus was officially sunk into Kritosaurus under the first name stands rule, and there it spent the next fifty odd years.
By the 1990s the validity of Kritosaurus was being called into question, and the "separated lizard" was separated again, from Gryposaurus, due mainly to its shabby remains and the whiff of uncertainty that surrounded them. At least for now, the slightly younger and primarily Canadian Gryposaurus is Gryposaurus again and gaining momentum, while Kritosaurus is fading into obscurity and receives only passing mention, mainly because of the dinosaurs that it has been historically entangled with.
In 1916, Kritosaurus was restored with an arched snout, an idea Brown had nicked from Lambe's Gryposaurus, but by this point, he was already convinced that the pair were the same creature. After the 1942 publication of Lull and Wright's hadrosaur monograph, Gryposaurus was officially sunk into Kritosaurus under the first name stands rule, and there it spent the next fifty odd years.
By the 1990s the validity of Kritosaurus was being called into question, and the "separated lizard" was separated again, from Gryposaurus, due mainly to its shabby remains and the whiff of uncertainty that surrounded them. At least for now, the slightly younger and primarily Canadian Gryposaurus is Gryposaurus again and gaining momentum, while Kritosaurus is fading into obscurity and receives only passing mention, mainly because of the dinosaurs that it has been historically entangled with.
(Separated lizard of the Navajo)
Etymology
Kritosaurus is derived from the Greek "kritos" (separated), referring to the separation of its "weathered out" skull bones, and "sauros" (lizard).
The species epithet, navajovius, honours the Navajo Indians who inhabited the area.
Anasazisaurus horneri? (Hunt and Lucas, 1993)
Naashoibitosaurus ostromi? (Hunt and Lucas, 1993)
Discovery
The remains of Kritosaurus were discovered in the De-na-zin Member of the Kirtland Formation, near Ojo Alamo, San Juan County, New Mexico, USA, by Barnum Brown on August 27th 1904, after the report of "numerous fossils" in the area by George Hubbard Pepper of the Hyde Exploring Expeditions in 1902.
The holotype (AMNH 5799) is a partial and poorly-preserved skull.
