Anasazisaurus is a type of dinosaur that lived around 74 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous Period. Its name means “Anasazi lizard” and comes from a group of Native Americans known for living in large cliff dwellings.
This dinosaur was found in New Mexico, specifically in an area known as the Farmington Member of the Kirtland Formation. So far, only a partial skull has been discovered, which makes it a bit tricky to learn everything about Anasazisaurus.
The discovery of Anasazisaurus happened in 1993, thanks to paleontologists Adrian Hunt and Spencer G. Lucas. They named it in honor of Jack Horner, who first described its skull. The skull they studied had originally been thought to belong to a different dinosaur called Kritosaurus, but Hunt and Lucas decided to give it its own name because they felt it was unique.
Anasazisaurus had a short nasal crest, a bony rise that was located between its eyes. This crest was one of the features that helped scientists tell it apart from other similar dinosaurs. The known skull is roughly 90 centimeters long, and estimates suggest this dinosaur was about 7.5 meters long and could weigh up to 2500 kilograms.
As a member of the hadrosaur family, also known as duck-billed dinosaurs, Anasazisaurus would have been a plant-eater. It had special teeth that helped it grind plant material, much like how we chew our food. It could eat plants that were low to the ground as well as those that were a few meters high.
Anasazisaurus lived in a rich environment where many other dinosaurs were also found, such as Parasaurolophus and Pentaceratops. Despite the challenges in knowing much about this dinosaur, Anasazisaurus remains a fascinating part of our understanding of the past world of dinosaurs.