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| The nose knows. Or some nose pun, I guess? |
Meaning: [discoverer Sergei] Kurzanov's high nose
Time: Early Cretaceous, c 120 million years ago
Place: Mongolia
Size: about 6.5 metres (21.3 feet) long
Type of Dinosaur: hadrosauroid iguanodont (near-duckbill beaked dinosaur)
Altirhinus was originally considered part of Iguanodon orientalis, a dubious species of iguanodont. More fossils revealed a rather different animal, with a bizarrely high snout. This fairly large herbivore had a rather narrow beak for selectively cropping vegetation. My restoration of it was influenced as a bit of an homage to the (unfairly) rather-forgotten 2000 Disney film Dinosaur, in which the antagonistic old Iguanodon males develop tall ridges on their snouts, clearly inspired by Altirhinus skulls. The tall, forward-slanting ridge along the back in my drawing is in reference to the quite good creature design in the film.
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