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Re: Big bad duckbills

Renato Santos wrote:

   In the recent tome Dinosaurs and oher Mesozoic reptiles of
California, ( I highly recommend the book ) partial remains of a truly
humongous Lambeosaurus are mentioned. Some paleontologists suggest
that fossil elements at the site in Baja, Mexico, represent an
individual  over 50 feet in length, and twenty plus tons.

Is this the same giant hadrosaur specimen from Baja California that was described as _?Lambeosaurus laticaudus_? This was discovered and described by William Morris a couple of decades ago, and is known from a fairly decent specimen (skull fragments, limb bones, pelvic fragments, and vertebrae, including articulated caudals) that is only provisionally referred to _Lambeosaurus_.

   Jim Kirkland gave a presentation here in Utah a few years ago on a
trip he made to Mongolia. He showed, among other things, slides of
undiscribed two meter long Parasaurolophus skulls.


Including crest?

      So here is my question. What are the largest duckbills based in
the fossil record? I know that Shantungosaurus from China is about
fifty feet long, but how much of the skeleton is legit?

The _Shantungosaurus_ skeleton mounted in Beijing measures only slightly less than 15m long. It is a composite of five incomplete skeletons, so the length estimate is probably 'legit'. _Shantungosaurus_ appears to be very similar to _Edmontosaurus_ of North America.

I know the North American hadrosaur _Hypsibema_ is pretty darn big, but I don't have any size estimates at hand.

Cheers

Tim