Day 194#: Charonosaurus jiayinensis
Merry day twenty-three of Dino-December! Today's animal of the day is Charonosaurus jiayinensis!
Image credit: Neil Redfield
Charonosaurus jiayinensis was a species of hadrosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous period in what is now China, and was among the last of the non-avian dinosaurs before the asteroid that heralded the end of the Cretaceous struck Earth. Its genus name means "Charon's lizard" in reference to Charon, the ferryman in Greek mythology who transported souls across the River Styx and into the Underworld. This is because when paleontologists first discovered this dinosaur, they found a massive bonebed of these dinosaurs with tons of different individuals. It's very likely that this was a large herd of Charonosaurus that all ended up dying at the same time, possibly due to a flash flood or other natural disaster. It was also discovered on the southern bank of the Amur River, which separates China from Russia. So, that may have helped influence its name as well. Meanwhile, the species name jiayinensis refers to the Jiayin Village, which is just a little way west of where Charonosaurus was first discovered.
Image credit: Prehistoric Kingdom by Blue Meridian
Charonosaurus was one of the largest known species of hadrosaurs and was about 33 ft long and weighed around 5.5 tons. It looked very similar to the North American Parasaurolophus, though quite a bit larger. Both genera have long hollow crests on top of their heads, which acted as resonating chambers and allowed the dinosaurs to make very loud and distinct-sounding calls to communicate with each other over long distances. Charonosaurus and Parasaurolophus look so similar that many paleontologists suspect that Charonosaurus might actually be just an Asian species of Parasaurolophus. If this is true, then it would be the fourth species of Parasaurolophus in addition to P. walkeri, P. tubicen, and P. cyrtocristatus (which I actually covered way back on day 14#).
Image credit: cisiopurple on DeviantArt
Regardless of whether or not Charonosaurus is actually a species of Parasaurolophus or not, it's clear just by looking at them that the two dinosaurs were closely related. Though some analyses suggest that Charonosaurus may actually have been slightly more closely related to a Mexican hadrosaurid called Tlatolophus than it was to Parasaurolophus. Either way, Charonosaurus is slightly unusual since it lived during a time when many of the lambeosaurine hadrosaurs (which Charonosaurus belonged to) had disappeared from the fossil record. It's possible that Charonosaurus may have been one of the last surviving species of lambeosaurines, or that more members of this group actually did manage to survive into the latest part of the Cretaceous but just didn't fossilize for some reason.
