3.8" Edmontosaurus Dinosaur Fossil Vertebrae Bone Lance Creek FM Wyoming COA
Location: Lance Creek Formation, Weston County, Wyoming (Private Land Origin)
Weight: 14.5 Ounces
Dimensions: 3.8 Inches Long, 2.7 Inches Wide, 2.1 Inches Thick
Comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.
The item pictured is the one you will receive.
This is a genuine fossil.
Edmontosaurus, meaning "lizard from Edmonton," is a hadrosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous period, approximately 71 to 65 million years ago. Adults typically reached lengths of up to nine meters, with some larger specimens measuring as much as thirteen meters. Weighing around 3.5 tonnes, Edmontosaurus ranks among the largest members of the hadrosaurid family.
Edmontosaurus could pass the toughest foodstuffs back and forth across the teeth with its muscular, daring pouches.
To fit so many teeth into its mouth, they were packed into tight "banks" of up to sixty rows, and new teeth continually grew to replace lost teeth — analogous to a new shark. The bones of the higher jaw would flex outwards as the lower jaw came up, so the mandible could grind against it. Typical food would have built-in conifer needles, seeds, and twigs, and these have been established in the body cavities of fossilized Edmontosaurus. It was evidently a tree-browser.
The 1908 Wyoming find was notable for preserving fossilized skin impressions of Edmontosaurus. Rapid drying caused the skin to imprint in the mud, allowing scientists to determine its scaly, leathery texture. The thigh muscle lay beneath the skin, creating the appearance that the leg separated at the knee joint, with the entire thigh enveloped by skin, enhancing its duck-like morphology. Additionally, numerous tubercles were present along the neck, back, and tail, providing further insight into its integumentary structure.
Edmontosaurus was bipedal but could surely have walked on four legs. The forelimbs are shorter than the hindlimbs, but not so much that four-legged motivation was unfeasible. The front feet also had hooves on two fingers, and weight-bearing pads like folks of Camarasaurus. The rear feet had two toes, and all were hooked. The bone arrangement in the lower limbs suggests that both the legs and feet were attached to very influential muscles. The spine curved downwards at the shoulders, so Edmontosaurus would have had a low posture and would have browsed close to the ground. Despite the power of its limbs, Edmontosaurus would only have been slow-moving and had few defensive features. To survive, it must have had keen eyesight, hearing, and smell to get an early warning of predators.
