NAME

Meaning - Altirhinus means “high nose”
Pronounced - al-ti-RINE-us
Named By - David Norman
When Named - 1998
DIET

Herbivore (plant-eater)
SIZE

Length - 23-26 feet (7-8 m) long
Height - 6.6 ft (2 m) tall at the hips
Weight - 4 tons
WHEN IT LIVED

Cretaceous period, about 120-100 million years ago
WHERE IT LIVED

Fossils have been found in Khuren Dukh, Dornogov (East Gobi Province), south-central Mongolia, Asia.
FOSSILS

Altirhinus is known from five partial skeletons and a two skulls (plus another fragmentary skull).
CLASSIFICATION
  • Kingdom Animalia (animals)
  • Phylum Chordata (having a hollow nerve chord ending in a brain)
  • Class Archosauria (diapsids with socket-set teeth, etc.)
  • Order Ornithischia - bird-hipped dinosaurs
  • Suborder Ornithopoda
  • Family Hadrosauroidea - duck-billed dinosaurs
  • Genus Altirhinus
  • Species A. kurzanovi (type species named by Norman, 1998) Altirhinus used to be known as Iguanodon bernissartensis (Rozhdestvensky, 1952).
INTERESTING FACTS

Altirhinus had a tall beak on its rounded snout and a spiked thumb on each hand. This big-nosed dinosaur may have had a good sense of smell. It walked on two long legs but could also graze on all four limbs - the arms were a bit smaller than the legs.